Born eight days apart, Billy Peal and Josie West were first cousins but a great deal more like siblings. Billy’s mother Mary, whom all the West boys called "Baby Sister," was younger sister to Josie's father, one of a set of twin boys. After the death of his father in the Vietnam War, Billy was taken under the wings of his mother's three brothers and his maternal grandparents who all lived together on the family ranch. Josie and Billy referred to themselves as twins with different parents. The actual twins, Tim and Jim West, were rodeo enthusiasts, the first a steer wrestler and the latter a calf roper. Billy and Josie shared their enthusiasm and Billy participated in bronco riding, steer wrestling and calf roping while Josie became a serious barrel racer. Still, Billy was always a gentleman. Josie, however, could outride, outshoot, and outcuss any of the boys around her and gave her dad a run for his money as well. This was a constant source of contention between her parents, roughshod rodeo rider Tim and Jim the epitome of a perfect lady. A complication in Billy's life was his parents' history. William Peal and Mary West had married in secret. William was in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M College and not supposed to be married, Soon, though, Mary was pregnant and the relationship was hard to hide. William's conniving stepmother, Alice Peal, saw an opportunity and launched a smear campaign to discredit the couple, casting doubt and shame upon their "secret marriage," and trying to convince Billy’s paternal grandfather, bank president and mayor of the small town of Westerly, Texas, to cut Billy out of any inheritance. Life gets pretty interesting with Alice Peal at the head of anything and everything in Westerley.

James Allen is a high school chemistry teacher in the small East Texas town of Richie, Texas. With a master’s degree in Chemistry from Texas A&M University, he could have tripled his salary in industry but Jim's mother, an English teacher before leukemia took her life, had instilled a love of teaching in her son. He has chosen the family farm and a tranquil life fishing with his mentor and friend Jess Winters, a retired math teacher. On the surface, Jim appears to be a clumsy, nerd, stumbling through life with his head in the sand, but content with the quiet life of a teacher. He does not date, even skipped his senior prom, but at the beginning of his fifth year as Richie High School’s Chemistry teacher, Jim happens to sit down beside new hire English teacher, Kay Adams. Kay is an ex-Marine and a widow with a five-year-old daughter, whose husband, another Marine, was killed by a landmine in Iraq. After leaving the Marines because of the difficulty finding a safe place for her daughter when deployed on assignment, Kay has started a new life with a degree in English and a teaching certification. She lands in Richie, Texas, seeking a small-town environment for her daughter. On that day, when he sits down beside Kay, sparks fly and Jim is smitten. Up ahead in their journey as a couple, there are many hills to climb in a gossipy, corrupt, little town but hopefully love is on their side.

Grayson County is famous in southwestern Virginia as the cradle of the New River settlements--perhaps the first settlements beyond the Alleghanies. The Nuckolls book is equally famous for its genealogies of the pioneer settlers of the county, which, typically, provide the names of the progenitors of the Grayson County line and their dates and places of migration and settlement, and then, in fluid progression, the names of all offspring in the direct and sometimes collateral lines of descent. Altogether somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 persons are named in the genealogies and indexed for ready reference.

This book contains the following chapters concerning Haywood Hansell and American Strategic Bombing in World War II: the problems of air power, (2) the early years: education and acts, (3) planning, (4) the frictions of war, (5) the global bomber force, (6) triumph, and (7) tragedy.