William Meara began life as a vagabond under the hand of his misbegotten rogue of a father. Products of unrelenting poverty and struggle in the mountains of Avery County, North Carolina, the two tried life as homesteaders in the newborn state of Washington in 1907. From that experiment, William would go from one misadventure to the next as if in the tow of rough and often perverse circumstances. He went in that misguided and violent fashion until he reached the textile villages of Marion, North Carolina, where labor upheaval in 1929 would explode into the deadliest confrontation in southern history. His life was one of no excuses and no avoidance of hardship in the reality of America in the early 20th century.