"When Violet Ruth Pistole turned a gun on herself in a Dallas, Texas, package store in 1952, she was a woman of 27 with two husbands in her past and a four-year-old son she rarely saw. She wasn't alone when she raised the gun to fire." Violet's story -- "Out With a Bang" -- is just one of the "ancestories" in this engaging collection by writer Marcia Smith. Each story is a vivid encounter with "the murderers and madmen, explorers and settlers," and above all, "ordinary men and women" in her family tree. She depicts defining moments in their lives with brilliant details, adhering to facts while unearthing emotional truths. Among many others, we meet "A Virtuous Woman" who took huge risks to help ailing neighbors in the Spanish flu pandemic 100 years ago; we escape with a runaway wife in "The Runaway;" we witness the shocking crime of a jealous lawyer in "Murder in Muskogee"; and admire a dedicated teacher in "The Schoolmarm." While portraying them as individuals, Smith shows their lives in the broader context of American history as they live through plagues, wars, booms, busts, and sweeping social changes. Smith was inspired by historian George Trevelyan's comment that "If you could make alive for other people some cobwebbed skein of old dead intrigues and breathe breath and character into dead names and stiff portraits, that is history to me!" The Woman in the Well and Other Ancestories accomplishes precisely that. Smith's portraits come to life as time-traveling mini-biographies, making for fascinating and compelling reading.