Guns, liquor, racial strife, divisive politics, and war come together in ten well-documented, true-crime stories of nineteenth-century mountain families. In these accounts, unrivaled by any of the Wild West, history and genealogy buffs may be surprised to learn that Asheville was the site of more than one lynching, that the Ku Klux Klan had gained power in the region, or that seven times a US Deputy Marshal got away with murder.