Imagine the presumably pacifist Quaker physician surviving the wilds of frontier Louisiana only to see his descendants marry into families of battle-hardened warriors. One survived being bayoneted nine times in the Revolutionary War; one was tomahawked to death in the Indian Wars, and his heart was eaten by the redskins to carry on his bravery; brothers served as Andrew Jackson's aides-de-camp at the Battle of New Orleans; and one was a seventeen-year-old marching off to the Civil War with his slave by his side. For a storyteller, this family is fertile ground, and for the reader, it is fascinating.

Author of hundreds of articles plus over 20 books, Anne Butler has written about crime, children's stories, historical cookbooks, and the preservation of Louisiana's unique culture and landscapes. As this book shows, she's really a storyteller rather than a true genealogist. Fortunately she finds entertaining off-the-wall stories in every generation of this amazing family.