"Forget disco balls. Forget bell-bottoms. Forget lava lamps and mood rings and pet rocks."

For Jeremy Hilary Jones, the '70s were all about survival.

Appalachian settings ... fractured families ... vulnerable children ... Ursula Major is a quirky family saga in the vein of a reminiscence about a bullied youth struggling to keep his younger sister safe while their parents' marriage disintegrates.

"Take good care of your sister." This is the refrain Jeremy repeatedly hears growing up in a family of four in a small town on the Ohio River beginning in 1974, when Ursula—nicknamed "Ursie," his parents' Little Bear cub—is born. But his father abandons the family for salmon fishing in Alaska, and his mother turns to a snake-handling religious sect for spiritual comfort. From here, brother and sister navigate a series of challenges that culminate in the '80s with a brutal assault that bonds the siblings in a quest for revenge.

It all starts when Jermey's mother gives birth to Ursie in the back of a bus. But psychological counseling has convinced Jeremy that his memory about this incident is faulty if not fabricated. And now as an adult reflecting on his adolescence, he is beginning to doubt the core truth of other life-changing episodes. As the grown-up version of Jeremy contemplates reality versus imagination, he can only wonder: "What matters more: objective truth or the relationships that endure, forged by trauma?" It's a question for the reader to ponder as well.