Copper Kettle

Description

It's 1920. Jesse Sutherlin has returned to Buffalo Mountain a war hero, having after survived the trenches of World War I. Not only did he fight the enemy, reaching the rank of officer, he went a few rounds with some of his fellow soldier who viewed him as a hillbilly. Jesse is glad to be home. But his view of the world and of himself has changed. What next? He can't shake his training as an officer to follow the old lifestyle. He applies for a job at the local sawmill where his new boss quickly makes him foreman for a decent wage. And he meets the independent Serena Barker. His cousin and fellow soldier, Solomon McAdoo, was less fortunate in his war service. He's suffering from shell shock. One day, up on the mountain while tending to a family moonshine still owned by Big Tom McAdoo, he's shot in the back. When Jesse hears this, he knows violence is going to boil up. The west side of the mountain is McAdoo territory, while the east side belongs to the Lebruns. The dispute ignited by Solomon's murder will be like the feud between the West Virginia Hatfields and McCoys, with no winners, only more dead men. The mountain is a hard place, where shooting someone over a disagreement is just part of life. Jesse decides to head off the violence by investigating the crime. But he's hampered by his bellicose Sutherlin family who want retribution. Jesse is also held back by Serena, a Lebrun relative, who urges him to get away before he gets himself killed, and by a bigoted local sheriff who soon arrests him on the testimony of an eyewitness to Solomon's death. Jesse encounters a lawyer in Floyd, the county seat, who is hired to defend him when he's arrested, romances the girl from the enemy camp, and tries to stay alive while preventing more, perhaps wholesale, deaths. Big Tom gives him a deadline: four days. Looming over all this drama is the specter of the influenza epidemic that killed more people worldwide than died in the trenches, as well as the grinding kind of poverty that has become a way of life for folks on the played-out farmland of this corner of Appalachia.

Frederick Ramsay had published fourteen books that range from historicals (The Jerusalem Mysteries), to Africa (The Botswana Mysteries), to police procedurals (The Ike Schwartz Mysteries). In addition, his stand-alone Impulse was named one of the Best 100 Books of the Year in 2006 by Publishers Weekly. He was a retired Episcopal Priest, Academic, and author.

"Set in the same locale as the author's popular Ike Schwartz series, but years earlier, the novel is colorfully written, with an engaging cast of characters and some pretty serious themes: death, poverty, and the strength required to persevere in the face of virtually insurmountable odds."--David Pitt "Booklist " "Jesse is a wonderful protagonist and the characters on the mountain are interesting people. From his stoic mother who has had too many losses in her family to the girl he comes to love from the opposing clan, the reader meets a tight, finely drawn community. This appears to be the start of a new series by Ramsay and it is very welcome. I look forward to reading more about the mountain and its folks."--Elaine Cichantk "LibraryThing " "Though this sort-of prequel to Ramsay's Ike Schwartz series (The Vulture, 2015, etc.) isn't much of a mystery, it's memorable for its powerful portrayal of the difficult lives of proud but poorly educated people too set in their ways to change."--Kirkus Reviews "Set in 1920, Ramsey's satisfying prequel to his contemporary Ike Schwartz series (The Vulture, etc.) provides fascinating details of a soldier's life during WWI....It's a genuine pleasure to read a story of detection that depends purely on observation and logical deduction to reach its conclusions."--Publishers Weekly "Ramsay evokes a time and a place so vividly through Jesse's voice that I didn't read this novel so much as savor every page. It doesn't hurt that Jesse's courtship of Serena Barker (a shirttail member of the Lebrun family, gasp) is charming from beginning to end."--Dana Stabenow, New York Times best-selling author