This book follows the creation, production, and reception of Cornelia Nixon's 2009 historical fiction, Jarrettsville, from start to finish. Jarrettsville tells the story of one of Nixon's ancestors, Martha Jane Cairnes, who shot and killed her newborn baby's father, Nicholas McComas, following the Civil War, just south of the Mason-Dixon line in Jarrettsville, Maryland. Jarrettsville would go on to be many different things for different people: authors, publishers, reviewers, readers. The book explores Jarrettsville's transformation as it made its journey from the three interdependent fields of creation, production, and reception. This introduction discusses the disjunction between the study of production and study of reception in sociology; the three interdependent fields of creation, production, and reception; and how to tell a typical publishing story like Jarrettsville.