Thomas Dixon's TOMMY MACK: An Appalachian Childhood captures twenty-seven tumultuous - and heart-warming - years of growing up poor in the Tazewell County coalfields of southwestern Virginia, where an alcoholic and abusive father too often seemed more like predator than provider. While his father was in prison, young Tommy exalted in the times and wonders of nature, and the family planted and tended the gardens, all-the-while dreading the day when his father would return...