Set between 1950 and 1963, this coming-of-age memoir discusses one of America’s most taboo subjects—social class. Combining recollection, accounts, and analysis, this book leans on Maw, Pap, Ony Mae, and other members of this rambunctious Scots–Irish family to chronicle the often-heartbreaking post-war journey of 22 million rural Americans into the cities, where they became the foundation of a permanent white underclass. Telling the stories of the gun-owning, uninsured, underemployed white tribes inhabiting America’s heartlands, this record offers an intimate look at what was lost in the orchestrated post-war shift from an agricultural to an urban consumer society.
