Hark! The tale of the Hangman's Child! Berkeley Bezoar has hated his family his whole life. When his aunts and uncles weren't busy trying to woo one another, they were trying to kill each other. The Tug Fork River ran red with the blood of one side of his family tree, or the other most days. He's given the family grimoire and told to make a magician of himself; he decides to find a way to end the senseless feud between the Kentucky Bezoars and the West Virginia Thistledowns from whom he descends. And if diplomacy won't work, blood, fire, and magic might just have to do..