For readers of Jeannette Walls and Barbara Kingsolver, in this love story set in rural Appalachia during the Vietnam War, a young couple is torn apart by both global conflict and their families’ ancient feudIn late 1960s Appalachia, many things loom darkly over June Branham: the Vietnam War is dividing the country, and a strip mine is eating away the mountain at the head of the holler where she lives, threatening the natural landscape and the only way of life she has ever known. While still in high school, June has fallen in love. She is pregnant, and the father may be Ellis Akers. Ellis is the son of Solomon, a mortal enemy of June’s stepfather, Isom. The feud is so old it fuels two vengeful men with the power of long animosity between rival families.June’s brother, Tom, leaves to enlist in the war, and so does Ellis. Suddenly, June is on her own, at sixteen with a newborn, and is a mother unable to protect her daughter from the wrath of Isom....

Avery is no stranger to the weight of loss, the way it shapes and defines the expanse of a life. The death of her sister, when Avery was just a child herself, engulfed her and her family—a mother driven mad, a father who disappeared, and all the while, neighbors and friends ignoring and surviving. The loss shades Avery’s full being, becoming a deep part of her past and her future.As a young woman, Avery’s life in Eastern Oregon ranch country is filled with an acquired family: her partner Davis Lovell, a ranch hand and father figure; Lennie, Lovell’s daughter; and Davis’s grandparents. When Avery suffers the loss of her and Davis’s newborn child, it triggers and revives in her a familiar sense of guilt, one she has carried since childhood over the disintegration of her family.Written with the precision of Cynthia Ozick and the blunt passion of Alice Munro, this riveting story takes place on a landscape—the deserts of Eastern...