Four weeks after my mother's death in 1992, I discovered a charred sea chest in her attic. In it was a dove-gray logbook that contained the journal of Jeremiah Vann. "Lost Cove" is his story of five generations of two families: the Vanns and Pearsons. From the days of the Cherokee, through slavery and the Civil War, to the 1950s, they lived and died in a Tennessee valley - Lost Cove - completely surrounded by mountains. The following is an excerpt from Jeremiah's journal in April 1942 - "Even though I was a boy when it all happened, and even though I loved my mother dearly, there was a long time in my life when I believed what she had done with Captain Taggert was wrong, and that she was partly to blame for his death - but as I grew older and committed my own sins I began to think, who am I to stand in judgment of my mother who had loved me and cared for me without anyone's help, and who am I to judge anyone, even the Taggerts, for I have done terrible things in my life: I have been a drunkard and been lascivious, and I have cursed God, and I have killed three people - so who am I to judge anyone?" From the Unpublished Autobiography of Jeremiah Vann, as told in "Lost Cove"