Blood feud

In Colerain County, Ohio, not long before the United States enters the Second World War, a smaller war is waiting to erupt. After years of an uneasy truce, the long-standing tensions between the Clemmer and Kilkinney clans have once more begun to escalate. The rekindling of that feud and its devastating resolution - as seen through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Winnie Clemmer - are the subject of Annabel Thomas's powerful new novel. "All wars, little or big, have elements in common," Winnie observes. "Over and above the shedding of blood, I mean. To my thinking, self-interest starts them, plain meanness keeps them going. And of course whoever wins, the results are the same: the shriveling of souls." Embroiled in this conflict, which is rooted in the Civil War and the ancestral rivalries between Anglo-Saxon and Celt, are a host of indelibly etched characters.