Introduction

In a backwater place, in an almost-forgotten time, nestled in obscurity and barely one generation removed from the failures and remembrances of the Civil War, the descendants of that conflict have settled back into the wallows as dirt farmers, many destined to love and repeat the habits and mistakes of their kin. Re-baptized with the dust and silt of bottom land farming, the Chandler's perspective of life is of gazing on a grey horizon. This outlook is temporarily brightened by the birth of a son in 1900, with two more hands to toil the unending labor of their marginally productive land in Southern Indiana. Can that brightness of spirit grow and renew? A simple faith of constant and enduring belief through helping others emerges and binds those farmers together with a common cause to persevere. Thus, begins a journey filled with wins and losses, truth and lies, theft and murder, charity, and redemption.