The Willoughby Claim

An American novel. In the mid-nineteenth century, in the mountains of North Carolina, Tom De Willoughby, the neglected son of a prominent Tennessee family, keeps the store and post office at a remote crossroads. Huge, lazy and much loved by his neighbours, he one day takes in Sheba, a baby whose young mother, a stranger, has just died, and raises her alone. Years later his nephew Rupert arrives, poor and alone in the world: the Civil War has ruined the De Willoughbys, and a claim for compensation from the government in Washington could restore their fortune. A warm, humorous story about the family we choose for ourselves.