The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

This book is quite different from most mysteries in that the perpetrator of the crime is known right from the beginning. But what the book is about is about a family in trouble, and we watch the steady decline throughout the book. All of the major occurences (and believe me there are a lot of them) are connected with an old lady soothsayer's visions. There is plenty of suspense throughout the whole book, and it led me on and kept me engrossed until the catastrophic ending. Ms. McCrumb is a formidable author, and this book (the second in her Appalachian series) is complex, absorbing and quite magical.

I just started reading Sharyn McCrumb' s Appalachian books and I find myself emerged in them. These are her people and she does a beautiful job of telling their story. It's not a story of the "dumb hillbilly" , it's a story of their daily struggle to survive in a world that in some ways has left them behind. These are such proud people. Proud of their mountains, their families and communities and their Irish-Scott- Welch heritage. An old woman has the "sight", a young man kills but for a reason that we can't imagine, the preacher's wife finds her place and her reason for being with this community. It's just an extremely good read.

In the hills of east Tennessee, Laura has been a local minister's wife for less than a year when the sheriff calls her to the Underhill's farm to be with the living while he takes care of the dead.

The parents and two brothers are dead, killed in an apparent murder-suicide while the surviving two children, a boy age 17 and girl age 15, were away at practice for their high school play.

Ordinarily the young minister himself would have been called to provide comfort in a crisis, but he's been called for duty as a chaplain in the Gulf War, and his substitute at home is an elderly lay-minister. Laura is a city girl who doesn't feel at home in the hills that have always been home to her husband. She has also just found out she's pregnant and show more she's feeling tired and lonely. But she pushes herself to properly fulfill her role as a minister's wife, especially in her husband's absence.

She pushes herself to lead the church choir, which includes the Underhill girl, conduct the Christmas program and visit the elderly, including Nora Bonesteel. Nora, who lives alone in her isolated hill home, has The Sight. She's been known to already have a cake baked for the mourners' meal before the deadly accident happens. She doesn't always know what she's seeing, and even when she does know, she sees things she doesn't want to see, because she can't stop the bad thing from happening. Laura doesn't believe in The Sight, but she turns to Nora for friendship and help. She can't tell her husband about community tragedies or personal loss because she has to keep up a happy front to ward off his depression.

Meanwhile, the sheriff's deputy, a Viet Nam vet still tormented by nightmares, feels that something's not right in the Underhill case. There's also a side story of the polluted Little Dove River, once pristine and a favorite fishing spot, but now the color of tobacco spit and full of dead or deformed fish, thanks to the dumping of toxins from the paper mill upstream in North Carolina. The toxic water is also killing people and two elderly men seek revenge.

This isn't just an entertaining story and mystery that's hard to put down. It's also a glimpse of Appalachia and its people, including history, culture and beliefs, and how it's being changed and destroyed. I highly recommend it. show less

This second installment in McCrumb's "ballad series" introduces a recurring character, Nora Bonesteel, a woman who is blessed or cursed with "the Sight", which tells her things she often would rather not know. A hideous family massacre, in which a teenager kills his parents, his little brother and then himself, brings Sheriff Arrowood and the pastor's wife, Laura Bruce, into the lives of the two surviving teenaged siblings. I had a few reservations about the set-up in this one, but the story played out well, and I know from prior reading of later entries in the series that Nora Bonesteel is a force to be reckoned with.

Haunting and mystical, much like the snippets from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that are staged throughout this mystery set in the mountain community of Dark Hollow, Tn. I enjoyed rereading this mainly because it introduces Nora Bonesteel, my favorite Ballad Series character. She’s the mountain wise woman both blessed and cursed with the Sight, the random visions of the future and the spirit world that help make these stories so spellbinding.

I enjoyed this book far more than I expected. I had read McCrumb's first book (Bimbos of the Death Sun), which I thought was drivel (despite winning one of the major Mystery awards), and was done with her, but found the book in my possession. Took awhile to get to. Anyway, this book was entirely different in tone. It's not a traditional mystery in the sense of crime committed with dogged investigation by grizzled detective/obsessive spare-time other-interested-party. The story begins with the introduction of Laura Bruce, new wife of the pastor of Hamelin, TN, being called to the scene of a grisly murder. A mother and father and youngest son have been shot and killed by the oldest son, who then killed himself. Two other siblings have show more been left behind, and Laura Bruce has been called to tend to them. The murder underlies everything else, but the book continues with several additional tragic and interrelated developments in the town until the truth behind the initial tragedy is revealed. This book is part of the "Ballad" series by Ms. McCrumb, and beautifully details the traditions and brink-of-poverty lifestyle experienced by so many in the Tennessee backhills. The book is very well written and intricately plotted and detailed, and I will look for additional books by Ms. McCrumb. show less

Substance: A novel with a mystery in it. Read for the view of life in Appalachia. The red herring doesn't show up until the middle of the book, and the "clues" just prior to the disclosure of the mystery. Nora Bonesteel's visions are more explicit and more integral than some of the books in the series.
The plot reminds me of why I quit reading "Reader's Digest" in the 1080s: all the memes du jour are here.

Style: Lyrical, probably transmitting personal anecdotes.

NOTES:
p. 116: the anecdote about a student and his family reacting to Shakespeare echoes others I have read; one source claims that the dialect of that region reproduces Elizabethan English better than anywhere in the world (or did some decades ago);
p. 140: c'mon - not even show more Appalachian high schools still use foot-lights!
p. 148: the polluted river turns out to be well-known, but some of the characters act like they are the first to discover it; some questions left hanging, as part of the "evil corporation" meme of the time.
p. 188: Scots stay after 1776; conflict with the rest of the south over slavery.
p. 285: making tough calls - you can't save everyone all the time;
p. 300: God manipulating life, or just using circumstances for the best? show less