A quirky story set in small town Tennessee just as it is connecting to the railroad, a time of great change and confusion. The characters are vivid, and full of contradiction – puritanical about sex, willing to cheat others, suspicious of educated townsfolk, generous to hungry strangers, tolerant of lynching and "the whitecaps". Teeftallow was a both a critical success and a best seller in 1926; Stribling later adapted it as the 1928 Broadway play, "The Rope"