Sharyn McCrumb

Excellent historical fiction based on an actual event from North Carolina’s history, the early 1830s trial and conviction of Frankie Silver, a young mother accused of murdering her husband.
When present day Sheriff Spencer Arrowood begins to have misgivings about an upcoming execution – one he must witness – it causes him to reflect back on the folklore surrounding the Frankie Silver case. The parallel he uncovers between the two cases leads to an unsettling revelation and provides show more insight into the cultural inequality of the justice system, both then and now.

On rereading, this continues to be my favorite out of master storyteller Sharyn McCrumb's Appalachian Ballad series but I think I'll reread a few more just to be sure. show less

Sharyn McCrumb weaves together a modern crime story with the legend of Frankie Silver, an 1830s North Carolina mountain teenager who was convicted and executed for the murder of her husband. The plot has a lot of similarities to Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time. While recuperating from a serious injury, Spencer Arrowood, sheriff of Wake County, Tennessee, becomes obsessed with the legend of Frankie Silver. He has just received an invitation to witness Tennessee's first execution in 30 show more years as the representative of the condemned prisoner's home county. Twenty years earlier, Arrowood was convinced of Fate Harkryder's guilt, but now something about the case is making him uneasy. The two cases -- Frankie's and Fate's -- become connected in Arrowood's mind.

Sharyn McCrumb did her homework on the Frankie Silver legend. I felt like I was there in 1830s Morganton, North Carolina, watching the events unfold. Fate Harkryder's story was also well told, but it didn't have the same intensity as Frankie's story. I think it's because I was aware that McCrumb could choose Fate Harkryder's outcome, but Frankie Silver's fate was inevitable. It had already been written by history.

This isn't a typical mystery/crime novel. It has some characteristics of a legal thriller, but it isn't typical for that genre, either. It tackles some weighty issues such as the death penalty and "equal justice under law" as applied to poor white Appalachians. Readers who normally do not read crime or mystery novels might want to give this one a try. show less

As usual with Sharyn McCrumb's Applachian novels, an ancient song is at the heart of this story. Lark McCourry, a famous folksinger who has left the mountains and her difficult relationship with her father behind, takes a notion that there was a song she heard sung as a child that would be quite perfect for her next album...a song she does not fully remember, and which she thinks she might introduce to the world. In order to track the song down, and reluctantly to visit her dying father, she show more plans a trip back home. There are multiple stories intertwined in this novel, as it follows generations of Lark's family, and that elusive song, through the centuries from the time her ancestor Malcolm was kidnapped from a Hebrides beach at the age of 10 and pressed into service at sea in the 18th century, through the American Revolution, and the Civil War, to the recent past. Every time I put the book down I was amazed at how much Story was contained in the relatively short segment I had finished. It's a compressed generational saga that doesn't feel rushed or hurried, a sprawling historical novel that's somehow perfectly told in under 300 pages. I am in awe of the amount of research that goes into all of McCrumb's novels, but here she has outdone herself, and it all fits seamlessly into the narrative without ever feeling like a lesson. (In an author's note she explains how much of this story is based on her own family history, and also how she learned some of the historical details included in it--for instance, she found someone who could teach her how to load and fire a Springfield muzzle-loader such as her Civil War ancestor would have used. "That experience gave me an entirely new perspective on war.' I'll bet it did.) Naturally, Sheriff Arrowood and Nora Bonesteel play significant roles in the modern framework of the story, and Deputy Joe LeDonne has some interesting experiences that help him put his own past to rest. I don't often give this type of work 5 stars, but this one deserves every one of them. show less

I've been a big fan of [author:Sharyn McCrumb|317] for a long time. She has an odd ability to pinpoint exactly the topics that interest me and then she writes books about them. Her [book:Bimbos of the Death Sun|471512] is a tongue-in-cheek homage the golden age of science fiction. [book:Lovely in Her Bones|539] makes fun of Scottish highland clan gatherings, something I love even if most real Scots couldn't care less about them. Her [book:St. Dale|135103] series is about stock car show more racing...okay, she's lost me there. But where she really shines is her ballad series, a set of mysteries each bearing the name of an Appalachian folk song. Many of her earlier books offered a blend of historical fiction, murder mystery, and suspense featuring Tennessee Sheriff Spencer Arrowood and Nora Bonesteel, an ancient mountain woman with The sight.

Around about 2010, though, Sharyn must have realized that truth was stranger than fiction and started to write her accounts of actual cases. The most recognizable of these is [book:The Ballad of Tom Dooley|10616505], which tells the tragic story of the star-crossed lovers that we all know from the song Hang Down your Head, Tom Dooley.

The most recent book in her ballad series is [book:The Unquiet Grave|32620367], an unlikely tale of an actual murder trial in which the defendant was accused by none other than the alleged ghost of his victim. Whether you believe in haints or not, the people described and most of the events actually occurred. And clearly, the ghost must have played a part. The State of West Virginia said as much when they erected a historical marker with this inscription:

Interred in nearby cemetery is Zona Heaster Shue. Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband Edward. Autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparition's account. Edward, found guilty of murder, was sentenced to the state prison. Only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer.

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