Nobody's Child: Memories of a Childhood Lost

On a fall day in 1958, my mother put me and six brothers and sisters into a car. She took us seventy-five miles away from our Harlan County home and then abandoned us on the side of a road amidst the rugged Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky. Shortly thereafter, my siblings and I were separated and sent to a foster home and two orphanages. I was three years old, my youngest brother had just turned one, and my oldest brother was not yet thirteen. "Nobody's Child" grew out of an interest in that event and in family tales about a witch and a possible murder. It's a story about discovering the author's heritage among the moonshiners, coalminers, and truck drivers of Eastern Kentucky. Most of all, it's the true story of a journey to understand the circumstances and the desperation that drove my mother to do what she did, and to know what ultimately became of the twenty or so children that my parents brought into this world.