This collection of historical short stories spans the late-17th century through the mid-20th century. The stories are set in Scotland, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
Topics in the stories include the Covenanters in Scotland,; an immigrant from Ireland getting into trouble with the law in colonial Virginia; early immigration from Scotland to Pennsylvania; a businesswoman making the best of a tragedy in colonial Salisbury, North Carolina; a patriot couple in old Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, forced to discern the patriots and loyalists after the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in 1775; the recollections of a veteran of the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina; a young slave in South Carolina faced with the decision of trying to escape; a soldier in the American Civil War writing a letter to his parents after the battle at Sharpsburg in Maryland; what can happen when a settler gets seriously injured during a blizzard in the southern Appalachian Mountains in the 1870s; a woman's encounter with a lost Plott Hound and a black bear during The Great Depression in the southern Appalachian Mountains; the heart-breaking experiences of a foster child in the 1940s; a family thinks their house is visited by the ghost of a British soldier who was wounded in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse; and a 150-year-old farm house reflects on the people it has sheltered.
Each story in the collection includes author's notes in which Janet Morrison writes about such things as what inspired her to write the stories and historical background, so the reader can understand what is fiction and what is fact. The author drew on her family's genealogy and her historical research of the places and times in which the stories are set.
