He came into the world as the son of John and Jean Rankin, and what a world that was. The Rankin home perched on a hill above the Ohio River in Ripley was full-full of children, full of conviction, full of the kind of love that doesn't flinch when love is costly. John Rankin was a preacher and a fighter for human freedom, a man whose pen and pulpit never rested. But it was Jean who held the hearth, who steadied the household through threats and cold nights and the quiet weight of harboring the hunted. Together they made a home that was, in the truest sense, a place of refuge- for strangers fleeing bondage, and for their own children learning what it meant to live by their beliefs. Adam Lowry Rankin grew up in that light. He watched his parents choose courage again and again, and he made those choices his own. These pages are his words giving his life to us. As something lived and felt and deeply loved.