The book examines Robby Wilde, a man with paranoid schizophrenia who first heard a voice at age nine. Ten years before his death at fifty-three, Wilde asked his friend Elizabeth Kytle to write about his condition. Kytle traces his life from rural North Carolina to impoverished last days in Columbus, Ohio, using twice-told tales in which Wilde's recollections alternate with differing accounts from friends, family, and coworkers, and chronicles the slow unraveling and final breakdown of his life.

A compact narrative tracing the emergence and development of the common-law system from its medieval origins through its institutionalization and spread, explaining how royal courts, procedural forms, and judicial decision-making gradually displaced local customs and alternative legal traditions to produce a coherent body of precedent-driven law; it examines the influence of canon and Roman law, the growth of equity as a corrective, the transformation of remedies and forms of action, and the reforms of the nineteenth century that modernized courts and procedure, while also surveying the transplantation of common law to the colonies and its enduring principles such as stare decisis and the central role of judges in shaping doctrine.

A compassionately reported oral history that gathers voices from all walks of life to explore how people confront death, mourning, and the rituals that give loss meaning; through interviews with clergy, undertakers, family members, children and others, it traces the fears, faith, humor and practicalities that shape responses to dying and bereavement, revealing cultural differences, personal reckonings and moments of grace and resilience.