The story, characters, places, institutions, organizations, and incidents portrayed in this work are based on real-life events.In the final days of the nineteenth century, a child is born on a Kentucky farm. The mother dies in childbirth. The father cannot relinquish his resentment toward the boy, his second son.A conflict between patriarch and offspring develops, complicated by the presence of the first son, and the father’s second wife.The Iron Horse is a sprawling, decades-spanning tale that follows the second son’s maturation from little boy Clarence Hollins to rebellious young man Lee Hollins, and his search for a better life. It is a story that blossoms from the stifling toil on the family farm in the Missouri Ozarks into an action-packed quest galloping across the U.S. during the Great Depression.