On a fox chase, the lead dog heads the pack, and often pays a fearsome price. Such a dog is metaphor for people who step forth, when times get rough, into harm's way. Follow the life and times of a rural, Southern-Indiana family, with roots that reach back before the American Revolution, through the Civil War, and on to and through the Great Depression (1929-1941). From Chapter 5 on, the story spans the years from 1920 to 1944. Eudora Welty has written that all novels are about family. This one tells of a farm family the 20th Century had left behind. On their path to a new state of affairs,...