Appalachian Trickster — Joan Donaldson

When a schoolmaster torments fourteen-year-old Viney Walker and behaves in impropriate ways towards her female friends, Viney plots mischief to expose the coward's nature and drive him off her mountain. Along the way, Viney frees her sister, Lizzie, from an entanglement with the schoolmaster and discovers a ridge secret. Set in 1876, in the days before Thomas Hughes settle his Utopian Community, of Rugby, Tennessee, Appalachian Trickster introduces the main characters of the Cumberland Mountain Series.