“Maggie’s neighbor-women saw a young woman just like themselves, with no children to feed, trying to build a life, and so they helped her, unquestioning in recognition that she would help them in return. This was so.”

She was the only child born to parents with children from earlier marriages. America Lewis and James Henry Spiva had married for companionship, and to help each other raise those children. Each had lost a spouse to death. Their marriage culminated with Margaret Elizabeth, their last child and something of a surprise. America was forty-two years old and James was sixty-one. They were living in Meadowview, Washington County, Virginia, just outside Abingdon.