Bound Away

Written with James C. Kelly, Bound Away examines how people, institutions and cultural practices moved westward from Virginia over nearly three centuries. Using maps, landscapes, objects and family histories, it follows migration from the Chesapeake through the Piedmont, Shenandoah Valley, Kentucky, Tennessee and regions farther west.

The book rejects a simple choice between celebrating the frontier as the source of democracy and treating it only as a disguise for conquest. It shows continuity and adaptation together: westward movement created new communities and opportunities, but it also extended slavery, displaced Indigenous peoples and carried older hierarchies into new environments.