Book excerpt: Based on the true story of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, “this novel beautifully evokes a time, a place, and one of the more peculiar sagas in American history” (Booklist). Fanny McCoy has lived in fear and anger ever since that day in 1878 when a dispute with the Hatfields over the ownership of a few pigs set her family on a path of hatred and revenge. From that day forward, along the ragged ridges of the West Virginia-Kentucky line, the Hatfields and the McCoys have operated not within the law but within mountain codes of their own making. In 1882, when Fanny’s sister Roseanna runs off with young Johnse Hatfield, the hatred between the two clans explodes. As the killings, abductions, raids, and heartbreak escalate bitterly and senselessly, Fanny, the sole voice of reason, realizes that she is powerless to stop the fighting—and must learn to rise above the petty natures of her family and neighbors to find her own way out of the hatred . . . “Tautly plotted.” —Publishers Weekly “An absorbing story . . . Readers will be drawn to the Romeo and Juliet aspects and also learn a bit of little understood American history.” —VOYA