As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, This Well Runs Deep asks a deeply personal question: What did freedom, identity, and belonging mean for one Appalachian family navigating the earliest years of America?

Through years of genealogical and archival research, Monique Norington Joseph traces eight generations of women in her family connected to the mountains of Virginia, Kentucky, and the Appalachian frontier — a lineage shaped by Native, Black, and European ancestry long before America fully understood the categories it would later impose upon them.

These were not simply intersections of identity. This was who they were.

The memoir explores the lives of late-1700s and early-1800s Appalachian settlers who fought in some of America’s earliest wars while simultaneously navigating race, survival, migration, and inherited silence in a rapidly changing nation. At the center of the story are the women whose resilience carried generations forward despite histories often erased, misclassified, or left untold.

Blending inspirational memoir with cultural history and reflection, This Well Runs Deep examines colorism, maternal lineage, faith, and the emotional inheritance passed from one generation to the next. Ultimately, it is a story about the well these women created — and how that well continues to flow through the generations that followed, eventually leading to the author herself.