The Agan Chronicles is a book of memories of my mother's families: the Agans and the Croys. As I look back on the Agan and Croy families, the central core of their lives seemed to be a longing for, and love of, the land. In these families, farms were cherished, farms were lost, and when families were forced to live without land they felt displaced. This longing for land, for forty, eighty, a hundred acres, was a constant ache. The story of my mother's family is one of hard times and poverty, triumph and tragedy. It is a story of dreams deferred, and always, this longing for the land.