The Dark And Bloody Ground serves as homage to Kentucky similar to the tribute Lonesome Dove paid to Texas. It provides an intimate, yet sprawling, portrait of the reality of life in the mountains of Kentucky and Virginia. Webb details every aspect of the beautiful area including spacious caverns, rolling hills, wildlife, and tumultuous rivers. The region plays an important character throughout The Dark and Bloody Ground and reveals how easily nature gives and takes away from its residents.

Webb, who grew up in Kentucky, based the fictional town of Elkinsville on her own hometown and many of the characters in the book closely resemble her eclectic, and often ill-fated, neighbors. Legend, folktales and true-to-life historical events blend into a captivating account of life over the course of a monumental century.

"My original intention was to tell the story of Judge Wesley Adams, but the book seemed to take on a life of it's own," says Webb. "In researching the area back to the 1800s I became captivated by the drama of the whole region. What a debt of gratitude we owe our ancestors!"