Blood Feud

Feuds are almost a staple of Appalachian lore--who hasn't heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys, after all? And where there's a family feud, there must be two star-crossed lovers caught in the middle; such is the stuff great folk ballads are made of. In Blood Feud, the warring families are the wealthy Clemmers and the rebellious Kilkinneys, and the lovers are the story's narrator, 13-year-old Winnie Clemmer, and 15-year-old Davey Kilkinney. Set in a coal-mining community in Ohio just before the onset of the Second World War, the novel follows an escalating series of events that jerk the two families out of an uneasy years-long truce and propel them into direct and bloody conflict. A strike, a disaster at the mine, a young Romeo and Juliet caught in the middle--what rescues these too-familiar ingredients from being just another rehash of an ages-old story is Annabel Thomas's fine and lyrical prose, and her perceptive heroine's singular voice. She may be only 13, but Winnie recognizes a fundamental parallel between the battle brewing in Colerain County and the greater war hovering on the world's horizon: "Self-interest starts them, plain meanness keeps them going. And of course whoever wins, the results are the same: the shriveling of souls." A lot happens to young Winnie Clemmer in this novel, but her soul remains expansive to the end.