The Far Family picks up after Dykeman’s The Tall Woman and tells
the story of Lydia McQueen’s children and grandchildren. The
novel opens in the twentieth century when protagonist Ivy
Thurston Cortland, Lydia’s granddaughter, is an old woman. Ivy
and her siblings Clay, Frone, Phoebe, and Kin have left their
Nantahala home for other areas of the country, but crisis
strikes when Clay returns to the valley town. An African
American man is murdered shortly after his arrival, and Clay is
accused of the crime. The novel’s chapters alternate between
“yesterday” and “today” to tell the story of the Martha McQueen
Thurston’s children as they reunite to help their brother Clay.
The “today” chapters focus on the family crisis, while the
“yesterday” chapters relate the family’s beginning. Martha and
her husband Tom purchased the mountain land where Lydia and Mark
McQueen raised their family in The Tall Woman, but Martha’s
children have a different relationship with the land than she
did when she was a girl. The family ti