Who extracted the pine gum? Small landowners hired a few laborers to do the work, while labor camps were often used by large landowners. In the early twentieth century, the famous writer Zora Neale Hurston spent time in Florida documenting what it was like to work in such a camp. Her interviews became part of the anthropological work Mules and Men. Camps used a debt peonage system, ensuring workers were always at a financial disadvantage. Add in the woods riders （camp bosses specific to turpentine） and the forms of punishment to address issues, and many compared the camps to a form of slavery. Still, workers enjoyed an uncommon peace and solitude in the forests, and came to labor in them for that very reason.
North Carolina was at one time the top producer of naval stores in the world. Those from here who did this work came to be known as “tar heels,” because pine gum stuck to the soles of their bare feet. The name used to be an insult, but, as history tells it, it was flipped into an accolade during the Civil War when soldiers from North Carolina were said to have stayed in the battle, as if they had tar on their heels. Today it is a well-known nickname for the sports teams associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and of course we’re known as the Tar Heel State.
The discovery of this bygone history was one of those lightning strike moments authors sometimes have. For me as a writer, it was time for something a little bit different, and this book is the result of that effort. Even while applying a fictional narrative, I hope I have in some small way honored the Southern states that were part of this history and, more important, offered a tribute to the original tar heels who lived and toiled in the deep piney woods of the South.