Brought up in a mixed-race community - part Scots, part Native American - in the forests of North Carolina in the mid-nineteenth century, Rhoda is the first of her family to be able to read and her parents have plans for her. But the coming of the Civil War brings labour conscription for her brothers, who become outlaws, unwilling to fight for the Confederacy; and when Rhoda falls in love with the outlaw leader Henry, her mother fears the relationship can only lead to disaster-Beautifully written and stunningly observed, Nowhere Else on Earth takes the reader into the backwaters of the American South and the chaos and anarchy of civil war, in the heart-breaking story of one of the most appealing heroines of recent fiction.