Cassie Chambers had the benefit of an encouraging and successful family. While there was some pull to keep her in KY, she had enough support to venture to NM for an international program, then to Wellesley, then Harvard, and Yale Law School. In her life story we get a different than usual picture of Appalachian life, though there are times that she refers to experiences that we may feel more familiar with, as they exist too. She is interested in capturing the complexity of hill culture.

As she ventures beyond, she experiences the discomfort of moving into social situations where she doesn't "know the rules" or the way to dress. She tells of her fear of losing her hill identity as she gains this other outside identity. She goes to law school and returns to KY to work in family law. And in her return realizes "I know that I will never truly belong in the same way, I have grown, and I have changed, but I will always remember the hills that I came from" (368).