Pictured: (Upper) The author and his son, Matt, look eastward across the Atlantic Ocean from Martha's Vineyard in 1979, where 359 years earlier, the Pilgrims raised sail to wind, heading westward over the same course, and this story began. (Above) The Matthews sod home three miles South of Hazleton, Kansas, circa 1879. The man in picture is probably Harry Matthews.

An untraditional "genealogy book", An American Family "turns the family tree upside down," tracing back the ancestral roots of a single modern family united by the marriage of authors James E. Carbine and Marianne Lemly in Baltimore, Maryland on August 5, 1972. The lives of their ancestors, often close friends of historically significant individuals, are placed within the context of contemporaneous events. The result is a history of the United States of America , from its earliest colonization to the end of the Second World War, recounted in a richly personal good read.

"An American Family is a remarkable book.  James and Marianne Carbine succeed brilliantly in bringing to life the major event of the American experience as they are personalized in the lives of the Lemly and Carbine families.  This work will undoubtedly become a much studied model of how to write a narrative family history." Ralph J. Crandall, Executive Director Emeritus New England Historic Genealogical Society

The stories unfold on a human scale, as "ordinary people" share in the forces that shaped our country, among them strong women, intrepid settlors, Civil War and "Greatest Generation" heroes, and even the occasional scalawag.

An American Family is an intriguing and satisfying experience for genealogy enthusiasts, history buffs, educators, family history sleuths,and anyone who enjoys a multi-generational tale.