A Time for Every Season - by Paul David Combs (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A soaring chronicle of an Appalachian family torn between blue and gray.

On the frozen banks of Troublesome Creek in Breathitt County, Kentucky, young Shadrach "Rebel Shade" Combs grows up wild and fearless, the second son of the county's first judge. Alongside his brothers Henderson and Jeremiah, Shade knows a world of snowball fights, one-room schoolhouses, and the rugged rhythms of Appalachian life. But the America beyond their mountain hollow is fracturing, and a war is coming that will force neighbors, friends, and even kin to choose sides.

When the Civil War reaches the hills of Eastern Kentucky, the Combs, Noble, Allen, and Landrum families find themselves swept into a conflict that defies simple loyalties. Some choose blue. Others choose gray. The reasons are as tangled as the creeks that carve through their homeland. For Shade, the war will demand everything: his youth, his certainty, and nearly his life. Three marriages, decades of hardship, and secrets buried in separate cemeteries mark the long toll of a nation divided.

A Time For Every Season is a sweeping, meticulously researched novel drawn from real family histories and oral traditions passed down through generations. In a story that stretches from 1850 to the scarred aftermath of Reconstruction, one question echoes across the mountains and across the centuries: when a house divides against itself, what survives?