Arthur Totten, she writes, always told people that he would want to die in the presence of the Lord in a church. He was true to his word he died in 1971 while spending one evening inside his little red brick church, praying. Blakey was only 19. The book is not a linear novel as much as it is a series of interlocking essays on her youth. The stories overlap and refer to each other.
Some chapters are a dozen pages long, while others fill only three-quarters of the printed page.
Each of the 114 pages tells a story. The stories range from the suicide attempts and obvious mental illnesses that plagued her older brother Joe to an apparently haunted house in which a teenage Blakey and her first husband, Joe, lived. Her family is now spread throughout Saltville, Marion, Chilhowie, Bristol, Tazewell and Richmond, as well as Indiana, and other states. Blakey said nearly all her relatives have copies of the book. Brown wrote that Blakey's book not only contributes to the history of Saltville, but the Totten and Blakey families as well.