One winter morning in 1918, Earl Layman climbed to the top of a grain silo and peered across the frozen landscape toward Knoxville, Tennessee. He saw his future there, not dependent on the cows below him. With a war going on, jobs were plentiful, and Earl left the farm to gamble his future on the nearby town. 

Knoxville also attracted Marie Little, an Alabama tenant-farmer's daughter who became an adult at age fourteen. From this inauspicious beginning, she blossomed into a bobbed-hair, Charleston-dancing, independent woman. 

Months before the 1929 stock market crash, the two met and began married life with their flaws firmly hidden.

When the Rivers Flowed: An Ambitious Hillbilly and a Southern Flapper Discover Knoxville, Tennessee relates the experiences of Earl and Marie. A documented history that uses literary techniques such as plot and characterization, it covers events such as Knoxville's riot of 1919, the energetic 1920's, and the Great Depression. It does so by recounting the true stories of ordinary Americans who encountered the extraordinary events of their time.