"An Atlantic Monthly Press book."

Includes bibliographical references.

The setting -- The land -- The method -- The children -- Uprooted children -- Stranded children -- Hidden children -- The world -- The world of the hollows -- The miners need their bosses -- No one should be bossed around -- Owing them -- Like my teacher -- God cannot be questioned -- The people are weak, weak and rundown -- The near die down there, but they try to live -- Hugh McCaslin -- The world of the black belt -- The bossman -- The foreman -- The teacher -- The sheriff -- The preacher -- The yeoman neighbor -- The world of the wanderers -- Their father, their mother, their everything -- The growers -- Guarding the animals and children -- Selling gas to the children -- Teaching the wanderers -- Saving their souls, their damned souls -- The rural life -- The rural mind -- Whose strengths, whose weaknesses -- A proud and fierce spirit -- The mind of Christ in their heads -- Rural youth -- Winston -- Myrna -- Ronald -- Rural upheaval -- Rural religion.