The Kindred Gathering: A Reckoning with the Melungeons (The Battle for Coalwood)

Book two of the Clear Fork Series It s 1963, a time when coal and steel companies are posting only meager profits, and a huge easy-to-mine coal seam is found in Clear Fork, Coalwood, McDowell County, West Virginia. Coal and Steel executives are ecstatic until they discover the deposit is not on company land the land is owned by the Whitaker family whose ancestors centuries before settled Clear Fork. Company officials, led by a self-important blueblood from New England, try to take the land through legal and illegal means. As a result of the actions of a corrupt judge, the Whitakers are forced to call a gathering of their kindred to defend Clear Fork. A rich Ohio widow, a college professor and a small group of teenagers join the Whitakers, and from every direction, North America s strangest clans, including the mysterious Melungeons, converge on McDowell County. As a result, steel company officials learn the power of the Kindred.