Will Cook was as tough as nails. The son of a former Union soldier in a Confederate state, he was born into the poverty and racial division of the Reconstructed South. Moving to Tennessee’s last frontier near Reelfoot Lake, he and his wife survived floods, tornadoes, and the endless work of raising cotton and eleven children. There was always another job to do.

This is a penetrating study of race, culture, work, and honor in the rural South, seen through the life of William Lafayette Cook. He killed a man over a daughter’s honor. He had a daughter who died in his arms. Love him or hate him, he was one of whom Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a Man!