Raft Tide and Railroad

By Edwina Pendarvis

Absalom Thacker sets out on horseback after his sister Darkes, who has run away to the mountains of eastern Kentucky--thus begins this story of an Appalachian family, from the early 1800s, through the Civil War and the timbering era, when men rode logs down the swollen river during raft tide, through the coming of the coal mining industry, with its booms and busts, to a record-breaking sale of a thoroughbred race-horse at the Keeneland auction in Lexington. These family tragedies and comedies center on Absalom's descendants, especially Jetta Johnson and her youngest son, who is eleven years old when Jetta is murdered. Combining local lore, letters, memoir, and media-accounts, the stories sketch one family's experiences in its two-hundred-year history in the rugged geography of the Cumberland Mountains.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976881748
• ISBN13: 9780976881742
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Blair Mountain Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.3"
• Age Range: 18 to 21 years