Her daddy sold her to a snake of a man for twenty acres of black dirt.

Didn't matter that she was only sixteen and her heart belonged to someone else.

Medusa Lawless struggled with the hardships of life in the Appalachians in 1900. Her family were dirt poor, outcast in the small holler of Copperhead Creek. Her daddy, with his raging temper and bent towards violence, showed her and her sister no love or kindness and ruled his family with harsh words and swift, harsh punishment while her mother defended his actions.

She had never been beyond the mountains surrounding Copperhead Creek. All she knew was harsh words and back breaking work. She never imagined it could get worse. Then her daddy sold her to a man that made her skin crawl and it got a whole lot worse.

Her dreams of marrying the young Cherokee man that held her heart were gone.

Life with her new husband was harder, more brutal, than she could have ever imagined.

In a twist of events, she was left alone, eaten by guilt for killing a man, pregnant and fearing the moment her husband would return.

Like the trees growing out of the side of a rocky mountain, Medusa grows and thrives. She learns her true value to those who know her. Discovers secrets that formed her life before she was born and finds love, grief and the strength to fight and be heard.