Family Matters is the tale of Carrie Whalen, a forty-six year old nurse, one year into her return to the lush green hills of Humboldt County. The journey home had been prompted by the death of her beloved father, Jacob Whalen, and the subsequent decline of his widow, Jezzabel Hatchet, whose local family members declared, "Jezzy ain't even gettin' up to the casino no more...Where's them damn kids, Carl and Carrie should be dealin' with her." This had initiated a three month phone campaign from a few of the Hatchets, as they worked to convince Carrie that she would be the logical choice for caretaker of her aging step-mother/cousin. "Yes, Jezzy was my step-mother, and she was my cousin, a situation not so unusual within the Hatchet Family," where theft was a simple dispute over belongings, molestation a little family exploration, and rape a minor bit of confusion over the words 'yes' and 'no'. It had been about three months after Carrie's move home that one of Jezzy's long-lost siblings, Robo Hatchet, came to life, newly disabled and now keenly interested in Jezzy's four thousand a month in pension checks... money Robo planned on claiming for his own little family. So this had launched another phone campaign, this time from Robo's trailer in the hills behind Blue Lake, straight through to Jezzy, where she lounged in an electric lift-recliner in Carrie's living room, complaining daily when Robo called, "Them kids won't take me nowhere...they're keepin' me down, always remindin' me about bills and financial crap." Then Robo and his father, Luther Hatchet, would explain to Jezzy in great detail that being denied a daily trip to the local Indian Casino was actually a form of elder abuse. As for Jezzy, being of a mildly demented, ill-tempered nature in the first place, it only took about three weeks of these calls before she reached flashpoint, relocating herself into a cabin in Robo's backyard. This left Carrie and her family wondering where Robo had been for the last five years...and how they were to reorganize their lives, since a twenty thousand dollar cross country move wasn't easily reversed. Yet there was little to do besides pick up the pieces and move on, Carrie slowly getting reacquainted with old friends and family members she hadn't seen in decades. It was during this re-acquaintance process that some of Carrie's cousins and second cousins began to reminisce about the family mischief and mayhem that had transpired in her absence...until the day she stumbled across one Hatchet crime so heinous that it would forever change her view of the Hatchet Family.