Plot
Rinaldi tells the story of the Hatfield-McCoy feud in the late 18th century through the eyes of Fanny, a young female member of the McCoy clan. Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, Rinaldi illustrates the fervent code of honor in the mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia as her protagonist struggles to understand the superstition and loyalty fueling the cycle of violence in Tug Valley. In the end, Fanny must choose between her family and her future to escape the feud.
When Fanny’s sister, Roseanna, the “purtiest girl in the county,” has an affair with Johnse Hatfield, the slow brewing hatred between the Hatfield and the McCoys erupts. As the families take the law into their own hands through dubious pacts and midnight raids, Fanny follows her sister Roseanna into a nest of secrets. Pregnant and estranged from her lover, Roseanna sews a coffin quilt to preserve the family members so quickly disappearing from Tug Valley. Fanny disapproves of the quilt despite her loyalty to her sister and evolves from innocent bystander to judicious dissenter as the violence escalates. With the help of her mysterious “Yeller Thing,” Fanny learns to overcome the petty hatred plaguing both families.
Read more about this topic: The Coffin Quilt
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)