Kin

A bitter row with his father caused Henry Hollis to move north to ante-bellum New York. Years later he returns home to the rugged mountains of Tennessee on the North Carolina border, drawn by his father’s peace offering, an extensive but extremely remote tract in the highest reaches of the Quachasee watershed. As Henry and his crew clear the land to build a new farm, word of his father’s collapse summons him down to Tulips, the Hollis homestead. Gathered around the patriarch’s deathbed, family members maneuver with unstated agenda as they urge Henry to take a cook for his crew back up to the Quachasee. They settle on Carrie, a young enslaved woman previously assigned as maid and companion to lame and deaf Audrey Ann, Henry’s closest sibling. Henry accedes reluctantly, but at the Quachasee finds Carrie’s initiatives unexpectedly valuable for crew morale. Carrie discovers in her mountain residence, not exile, but an exhilarating sense of freedom. It seems a happy congruence, a love story ready to unfold. Except the past intervenes, and the future disrupts. KIN chronicles a generation’s crucial decisions before and after the Civil War, and the impact on generations.

Alan Graebner headed east for graduate education, then taught American history for decades at the College of St. Catherine, a women’s college in Minnesota. Along the way his love of sailing mislead him into marina development, and an affinity for woodworking drew him into designing and building a half dozen houses, one on a remote island in Lake Superior, and another on an island in the Caribbean.