Centered on a little girl raised in the Appalachian region of North Carolina and then Virginia, Cricket's Child offers a mid-twentieth century social history. The narrative illuminates how historical milestones such as the emergence of a Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union impacted personal experiences in a working class, southern family. After the development of atomic weapons in the 1940's, the specter of a nuclear holocaust loomed ominously in American culture, as well as in the universe of the pivotal character in this story. This is a chronicle about how ordinary people went about their daily lives, how they earned a living, what diseases they suffered, what they ate, wore, enjoyed, believed, and feared during an extraordinary decade in U.S. history. Other issues which added to the general anxiety of the era, such as the polio epidemic, religious repression, and inequalities in social class, gender, and race are also explored in this book.