The Appalachian women in Kathryn Stripling Byer's work are constrained in numerous ways: by geography, by lack of education, by abuse, by poverty. Each seeks to find her own way through the world, and while at times this means a woman is able leave the mountains, more often than not it means she must stay and learn to live with the immobility her circumstances impose upon her. Many of the women in Byer's poems are waiting for love, or living with the results of having thought they found it. This is a world in which family is all, where "blood ties" help define a woman's life and circumstances. It is also a world from which it is difficult ”" nearly impossible ”" for a woman to escape.
In her "Blood Mountain" sequence, Byer makes explicit the ways in which men hold women motionless upon the Appalachian mountainside. She does this by telling the story of a hunted, haunted young woman who tries to escape her home and kinsmen on Beggarman's Trace. The courage and strength the unnamed woman exhibits when she leaves are matched by the danger she faces as she tries to find her way down off the mountainside. She becomes an outcast among her own people; worse, she is the personification of temptation, the devil who whispers in women's ears and makes them discontent with their domestic immobility.
"Blood Mountain" is no romantic escape narrative. There is no easy redemption for the women who live on Beggarman's Trace, no hope of happy-ever-after endings. Life for women in the Appalachian mountains is brutal and blood-filled; even worse, it is inescapable.