Tribal Knot

<p>Are we responsible for and to those forces that have formed us--our families friends and communities? Where do we leave off and others begin? In <i>The Tribal Knot</i> Rebecca McClanahan looks for answers in the history of her family. Poring over letters artifacts and documents that span more than a century she discovers a tribe of hardscrabble Midwest farmers hunters trappers and laborers struggling to hold tight to the ties that bind them through poverty war political upheavals illness and accident filicide and suicide economic depressions personal crises and global disasters. Like the practitioners of Victorian hair art who wove strands of family members' hair into a single design McClanahan braids her ancestors' stories into a single intimate narrative of her search to understand herself and her place in the family's complex past.</p>