“Among the ranks of contemporary writers, there remain some who know how to name—in the old ways—the confounding world around us. Pamela Steele is one such writer. She has listened closely to the voices most have forgotten. She has looked hard and long at the graceful, violent homeplace of her people. Her words unfurl like poems, delivered in dreams and visions and communions with the dead. In The Fields of Fatherless Children offers the reader a tale of survival, a geography of wounds, a multi-generational cartography of how to bear our scars and carry on.” –Glenn Taylor, author of The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart

For readers of Jeannette Walls and Barbara Kingsolver, in this love story set in rural Appalachia during the Vietnam War, a young couple is torn apart by both global conflict and their families’ ancient feud

In late 1960s Appalachia, many things loom darkly over June Branham: the Vietnam War is dividing the country, and a strip mine is eating away the mountain at the head of the holler where she lives, threatening the natural landscape and the only way of life she has ever known. While still in high school, June has fallen in love. She is pregnant, and the father may be Ellis Akers. Ellis is the son of Solomon, a mortal enemy of June’s stepfather, Isom. The feud is so old it fuels two vengeful men with the power of long animosity between rival families.

June’s brother, Tom, leaves to enlist in the war, and so does Ellis. Suddenly, June is on her own, at sixteen with a newborn, and is a mother unable to protect her daughter from the wrath of Isom. Without warning, her baby is kidnapped. Guided by her love for the generations of women before her, but now desperately alone, June must carefully navigate the search for her child alongside family and strangers in a wild and disappearing landscape.

In the Fields of the Fatherless Children is a powerful story of love and perseverance, masterfully told by a writer of exquisite care who knows intimately the rural people of this time and place.