The story of a father and son both reaching a sexual coming-of-age during the fifties evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of a decade when teenage sex was a furtive activity and everybody danced to romantic ballads played on the accordion....
Set in the first two decades of the twentieth century, mainly around Bristol, Virginia (which is partly in Tennessee), the novel focuses on Hannah Ruth Bayless, an untutored Appalachian singer with a beautiful voice; her handsome, thieving, backwoods...