"She didn't have much. She had untended brown hair that fell like scissor-twisted ribbons over her stalwart little shoulders. Grey eyes. She had will and steady strength in her little ropy arms. Her garden. Their mountain. Her Pop." Thus begins the history of Atta Just. Called only "Atta Girl," by her beloved Pop, Elijah Just, and raised by his side on his family's land, Just Mountain, the motherless girl loses him too and is moved from the small cabin she knows as home in with her hardened Aunt and her family across the valley. Atta is given a sleeping closet in the farmhouse, inherits a small field on their mountain is and left to her own devices. Spending her days on the mountain with her cousin and working the land as her Pop had, she is quietly watched over by Rachel Windwatcher, a Yuchi woman and healer, the only other resident of Just Mountain. Just Mountain becomes the guardian of Atta's life, all she knows and loves. One day, developers begin to cut into the mountain, possibly the one act of destruction in her life that Atta can do something about. Means is the story of one girl's survival, one woman's life story in the rural Cumberland mountains when all is lost. A rich, moving tale woven of the voices in Atta's life, of those who guide us, how we learn to guide ourselves and how we make peace with life's great tragedies. How simple survival can turn into a beautiful love story of life, even in the remotest of places with the smallest of means.