In the 1930s and ’40s, Peebles, Ohio, was a sleepy farm town populated by good-natured, hard-working, religious and patriotic people who represent the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps ethos of rural Appalachia. And those people form the backdrop for A Book of Matches: The Life, Murder and Family of an Appalachian War Veteran, a book written by Robert E. Hawkins, who grew up in Adams County in the 1980s.
