The Allegheny frontier, comprising the mountainous area of present-day West Virginia and bordering states, is studied here in a broad context of frontier history and national development. The region was significant in the great American westward movement, but Otis K. Rice seeks also to call attention to the impact of the frontier experience upon the later history of the Allegheny Highlands. He sees a relationship between its prolonged frontier experience...

Right before Thanksgiving, a freak tornado descends on Larkspur, the small town in Pennsylvania's Allegheny Mountains where matriarch and candy magnate Loretta Cisco-affectionately called "Cisco" by her grandchildren-lives, and levels the home she's inhabited for fifty years. Then there's more bad news: Cisco's beloved triplet grandchildren-Hannah, Sara, and Sam-all newlyweds, are experiencing marital problems but they refuse to confide in their grandmother....