Ken Roberts spent more than two decades researching marginalized, rural people across the world, studying their migrations from the rural areas to the cities. So he found it unusual that a group of people right across the Balcones Fault from his native Austin would have hung on in the hills well in to the 1960s. When granted some significant time off from his teaching responsibilities at Southwestern University, he decided to tell their story. His book, The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing, explores this legendary Texas subculture who migrated from Appalachia to the Texas Hill Country in the late nineteenth century. He lives on a ranch outside Liberty Hill, Texas. Visit his website.