"A valley community in the South which is dominated by righteous Squire Whisenant and sin-preaching Brother Locke is shocked from their barren, bitter life when nineteen-year-old Shade Motley and his fiddle stroll in -- and stay on. His music, the dances it encourages, the situations it creates, together with Shade's own antagonistic beliefs, soften the Squire, persuade Brother John and open the way for the Squire's two daughters to marry.. 'The Insolent Breed' aptly describes the Motley family - musicians, every one of them. Their story begins before the first World War, when young Shade Motley wandered into the town of Macedonia with his fiddle under his arm, and shocked that tight little puritan community with his love of music and life. From that day to the present, more than forty years later, we follow the fortunes of the Motleys - of Shade and his five singing, playing, irrepressible children - as they roam the South, a band of country musicians which eventually becomes famous on radio. For his raw material Borden Deal has gone to a subject untouched in fiction: the sources and developement of Southern folk music. It is all vivid and absorbing because the reader is living with 'the Motley Crew' - a frequently startling experience but always one to relish.