The Coffin Quilt: The Feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys

The title made me pick this book up. I really enjoyed it. ( )

I couldn't get into this book. Being a big fan of Ann Rinaldi, I tried numerous times to read it and I was never able to finish. Being thee feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys I expected more action and suspense. This novel was more centered on relationships and emotional and daily struggles. While it was good at showing the time period and mindset of these people it was not one of Ann Rinaldi's best books. ( )

Unlike some historical fiction, these characters are never distant and the plot is never dry. Narrator Fanny McCoy wasn't born when the Hatfields and McCoys began their long-standing feud, but she sees it erupt when her beautiful older sister Roseanne is impregnated by Johnse Hatfield. While the men of both families conduct midnight raids and "battles of honor," Fanny struggles to rise above the violence without disowning her family. This retelling of the famous feud is fast paced but emotionally challenging to the reader. Recommended for ages 10-14.

Awards:
ABA's Pick of the Lists
New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
TAYSHAS High School Reading List [Texas] ( )

Fanny McCoy, the youngest of the McCoy clan, tells the story of the infamous feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. The two families have hated each other for ages, ever since the Civil War when the killing began. Fanny is the pet of her older sister Roseanna, who sparks a new wave of hostilities when she runs off with Johnse Hatfield in 1882. Heartbreak and hatred follow as the men of both families fight and raid one another's lands. The killing grows ever worse until it culminates in one nighttime raid on New Year's Eve that leaves even the womenfolk dead or battered within an inch of their lives. Fanny is the sole voice of reason in her family filled with hatred, bloodlust, and an overdose of religion.

This has always been a powerful story. The senseless violence between the Hatfields and the McCoys spawned the feuding families in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Here the story is told through the eyes of a child who has grown up with the hatred and cannot seem to grasp the reasons behind it all as she grows up. In some ways I think the story would have benefitted from being told from Roseanna's point of view - but the insider/outsider perspective of the youngest daughter - part of the family, but not part of the decisions or the fighting - allows a certain distance in closeness that magnifies how pointless the feud really was.

At times, however, I felt like the narrator was simply too detached from the action. She doesn't really react to the killings as emotionally as I would have expected. She seemed very cut off from the rest of her family and their hatred - which baffles me, especially when the Hatfields kill her favorite brother. The book is very much a family drama - Fanny trying to decide how to cope with her zealously religious mother, her overbearing sister, her bloodthirsty brothers, and her implacable father and grow up. I simply didn't see as much fallout from the feud and how devastating it must have been as I wanted. The feud seemed more of a backdrop than the point of the story.

Good, but not what I was expecting ( )

This was a very good book, it had an amazing story line. This is one of my favorite books, you will never know what will happen next. ( )