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A McCoy in Hatfield Country

The Book

Fourteen chapters

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Two bloodlines. One town. Every badge it had.

The book runs chronologically: two bloodlines — McCoy and Vance — meet in the Tug Valley, survive a civil war and a feud, and produce, two generations later, a workingman whom the town of Logan trusted with every badge it had. Around his rise and his death stands the machine that ran Logan County in the 1920s, and the pattern of cases that were never quite brought to book. The chapters:

Hear the book. Chapter One, “The Bloodline,” read aloud in full — the same reading the family hears. Press play; the whole chapter is here.

At the finished site, every chapter will carry its own reading the same way.

  1. The Bloodline Roots, ~1759–1869. Abner Vance, Daniel McCoy's thirteen children, and Jennie's marriage.
  2. A House Divided The Civil War, 1861–1865 — who wore blue, who wore gray, in one valley.
  3. The Spark The feud ignites, 1865–1888: Harmon McCoy, the hog trial, the pawpaw trees, New Year's night.
  4. The Logan Wildcats Jim Vance's guerrillas and the home-front war that taught the valley its lessons.
  5. Devil Anse and Randall The patriarchs and the feud's main act, 1882–1891 and its long aftermath.
  6. The Wars That Made the Machine Coal changes the valley, ~1900–1921: the Mine Wars, and Don Chafin builds Logan's machine.
  7. A McCoy in Hatfield Country Lawrence Carey grows up in Logan; the workingman before the offices.
  8. No Exceptions The chief at work: constable, fire chief, police chief — and the arrests that made enemies.
  9. State v. Carey The shooting of Lawrence Avis and Lawrence Carey's trial, April 12 – May 28, 1927.
  10. A Death on High Street May 28, 1927, at the noon recess: the death, the certificate, and the silence after it.
  11. The Firehouse Killing Brook Carey, the eldest son, shot by the chief who succeeded his father — November 16, 1928.
  12. Blood Runs Deep Malissa and the seven sons: the widow's forty-three years at 41 High Street.
  13. The Machine 1920s Logan whole: the money, the offices, the let-off pattern — and the one conviction that took the state itself.
  14. Legacy What the family carried, what it buried, and what the paper finally gives back.

Chapter titles and order as of the current build. Chapter Fourteen is held for joint work and may yet change shape before print.