In 1984, Bernard L. Coffindaffer experienced an epiphany and felt a Divine calling to create the Calvary sites in West Virginia and across the nation. After selling his business interests, he used the profits to create the non-profit organization, Cast Thy Bread, Inc., which funded the erection of the Calvary sites, or "Crosses of Mercy" as he called them, on the property of supportive patrons. Before his death in 1993, Mr. Coffindaffer funded the raising of over 350 Calvary sites in West Virginia and another 1,550 in other states.

While driving through his new home state, David Pittenger began to see the crosses as a form of public art that simultaneously draws attention to the area around the installation and makes a statement about the generations of people who have lived on the land. Using notes Mr. Coffindaffer kept about each installation, David began hunting for and making a photographic interpretation of each setting. This book presents a select sample of his large and ever-growing portfolio of Mr. Coffindaffer's efforts. 

David J. Pittenger is an experimental psychologist and works as an academic administrator at Marshall University in Huntington, WV. As a psychologist, he is interested in the process of sensation and perception that allow us to detect and respond to our environment. Much of our perception depends on emotional and learned reactions, and our ability to associate different events and sensations. His scholarly work includes research that analyzes the persistence of learned human behavior that is no longer rewarded, the statistical properties and validity of various measures of personality, and ethical matters related to social science research. He has also written a number of textbooks on statistics and research methods.