Book Description

George Allan is a redneck woodsman who lives adjacent to the wilderness section of the Shenandoah National Park and comes home one day to find immigration officers waiting to arrest him for being an illegal alien. They serve him with a final order of deportation. The officers want to test the limits of the citizen birthright provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution and have documented that George's ancestors were indentured servants who never reported for work when they arrived, making them and their progeny illegal aliens. The locals in the hollow seek the help of a weekender, James Claiborne, an immigration lawyer in Washington, D.C. Then the adventure begins: difficult legal questions, corruption, and intrigue. Claiborne has to learn about the complicated social structure in the redneck community. He realizes that basically they are similar to any one of the many ethnic groups he works with in his law office who have kept their cultural identity as they merge into mainstream American. It is also a community dealing with its own renaissance and fascinating cultural aspects. When reading the book, you will become part of this cultural movement and begin to understand a community that is part of the American melting pot. 1