“As Katherine Bateman traces the evolution of her truly colorful family, she unearths an ‘historical blueprint of family behavior’ that she finds both rich and disturbing. With wit and candor, Bateman reveals her lifelong struggle to avoid the disturbing patterns of that legacy, while mining the emotional gifts passed on to her. The author’s enlightening journey through Clay family history will resonate especially with readers who have explored their own family trees in search of new understandings about themselves.”

“This riveting book is at once a journey into centuries of the American past and a deeply personal family saga, coupling the author’s meticulous historical research with her passionate curiosity and vivid imagination. Lyrical descriptions of this nation’s southeastern landscapes, its slow winding rivers and green mountain valleys, create a backdrop for the Clay family’s peregrinations, the storied deeds of its brilliant, heroic men and the audacious decisions of its inventive, sometimes preposterous women.”

—Ronne Hartfield, author of Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family

“With storytelling skill, historical research, and a questioning imagination, Katherine Bateman follows her family’s odyssey in America since the seventeenth century, primarily in Kentucky. Settlers, statesmen, entrepreneurs, strong wives, parents variously loving or distant, hard-drinking men and women—these and other forebearers inhabit the pages of Kentucky Clay.”

—Jean B. Lee, professor of history, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Published by:
Chicago Review Press
www.chicagoreviewpress.com

Publicity:
Jen Wisnowski
jen@ipgbook.com