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Eight-year old Bobby Bruce and his siblings visited their mother for the last time while she lay dying by her own hand. As a motherless child in Appalachia in 1925, Bobby was thrust into a life beyond his experience and imagination. Moonshine and bootleggers, the Temperance Movement and religious evangelists, and the quirky, colorful residents of the small mountain community of Belspring all contributed to the man Bobby would become. This story, told through Bobby's voice, is not only a narrative about a young boy, it is also a stockpile of now largely forgotten accounts of a slice of life from the little southwestern Virginia communities of Belspring and its near neighbor, the coal mining town of Parrott, and also of Bobby's days and years living among the rascals and saints of those places.