In this family history, “Raft Tide and Railroad: How We Lived and Died — Collected Memories and Stories of an Appalachian Family and Its Seventh Son,” Appalachian author, poet, and editor Dr. Edwina Pendarvis, was guided by sage advice from a grandmother, Jet Johnson, known only to her through family stories and photographs.

Not long before Johnson was murdered, she asked one of her sons to note the strength of a bundle of twigs — as opposed to an individual twig — and see it as a metaphor for family strength — a metaphor originated by an earlier Appalachian — the warrior Tecumseh. In “Raft Tide and Railroad,” the author has preserved her family’s history and recognized its strength through accounts that span seven generations of experiences in Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia from the early 1800s to the present.

Pendarvis, a key member of the Jesse Stuart Foundation editorial team, also tells a larger, communal story of those who settled the Appalachian region. It is one of homesteading an untamed wilderness, timbering the virgin forests, and moving the logs downstream on swollen rivers. She recounts life on the farms, in the small towns created by the coming of the railroads, and in the coal camps. As the title promises, the memoir focuses on the life of one “special” uncle, the seventh son of a seventh son and youngest child of Jet Johnson. His story is a rags-to-riches account of a self-proclaimed “hillbilly” who built a horse-breeding empire after selling a successful mining company. Sports Illustrated said of Donald Johnson: “Far from being a member of the horsey…