A Parchment of Leaves is set in 1917 and tells the story of Vine, a beautiful Cherokee woman who marries a white man, forsaking her family and their homeland to settle in with his people and make a home in the heart of the mountains.

Vine's mother has strange forebodings that all will not go well, and she's right. Vine is viewed as an outsider, treated with contempt by other townspeople. Her life becomes more complicated than she could have ever imagined due to her brother-in-law's fixation on her.

In the violent turn of events that ensues, she learns what it means to forgive others and, most importantly, how to forgive herself. As haunting as an old-time ballad, A Parchment of Leaves is filled with the imagery, dialect, music, and thrumming life of the Kentucky mountains.

For Silas House, whose great-grandmother was Cherokee, this novel is also a tribute to the family whose spirit formed him.