Modern ways crept up on Cynthia Bailey as surely as the water rose in Bee Tree Hollow after the dam was built below Brightwater Creek. Pa Bailey was ready to fight to keep his property, that had been his grandpappy's before him, but a gun couldn't hold back either the water or the government, so daughter Cynthia had to think and act fast.

What Cynthia thought and did is part of the story. The rest of it is what happened to Cynthia. For she was at first the kind of a girl who would rather sit on a rock high on the side of Brushy Mountain than go to school with other children younger than she was. A new Cynthia had plenty of spunk and she didn't aim to miss all the exciting changes and new ideas in the valley.

Also there was Paul Wilson and his sister, who moved to town and went to a big high school. Would Paul forget the girl back in the hills? Or would that girl, growing up, be the sort he'd have to come back to? It is a romantic and suspense-filled story, true to a homely yet advancing way of life in the Southern mountains.

From the dust jacket