As a fictional history, the novel, like all other histories, rises out of other texts, out of stories passed down through generations, and out of the author's personal experience. Some of the texts that play a role in the novel include Walter F. Lackey's History of Newton County, Arkansas (1950) and almost all of Vance Randolph's books on the Ozarks, but especially his Ozarks: An American Survival of Primitive Society and Down in the Holler: A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech. In Lackey's history, one can see a photograph of the members of a Masonic lodge that is very much like the photograph Eli Willard took of members of Stay More's "The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers' Union." In his interview with Douglas Wood, Harington said that "The denizens of Stay More derive from the many, many books of the beloved folklorist, Vance Randolph."

But the most obvious...