Sharyn McCrumb is one of the major wonders of the mystery world. Her books about forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson (including Highland Laddie Gone) are strong, meaty contemporary stories; her comic novels (Bimbos of the Death Sun, Zombies of the Gene Pool) are delightful satires. And then there's the jewel in her crown, the series known as the Ballad novels (including The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter and The Rosewood Casket) where the third-generation Appalachian resident McCrumb sews together what she calls "colored scraps of legends, ballads and fragments of rural life and local tragedy" into books that are like Appalachian quilts. The Ballad of Frankie Silver is the fifth in the Ballad series, and it might well be the best. The blend between the old story and the new is perfect, as Sheriff Spencer Arrowood digs into the 1832 case of the first woman ever hanged for murder in North Carolina--18-year-old Frankie Silver, charged with dismembering her husband--while some disturbing new evidence is surfacing about another, much more recent capital crime. If you have friends who don't read mysteries but liked Cold Mountain, pointing them toward McCrumb might be the start of something big.


From AudioFile
What could a century-old hanging have to do with an upcoming Tennessee electrocution? Based on a true story and told partly in flashback from four perspectives, FRANKIE seems a natural for a multi-cast production; shifts in time and character would be clearer. Even so, this is a listening experience that grips and doesn't let go. Setting is important here, and Herbert's husky voice conveys but doesn't overdo an Appalachian drawl while she expertly paces the pre-execution suspense. Perhaps by design, she is most effective as the two prisoners, especially the doomed Frankie, whose fragile, frightened words travel hauntingly through time. J.B.G. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
A summons to a long-delayed execution--Fate Harkryder, the condemned man he arrested 20 years ago, has reached the end of his appeals--sends Tennessee sheriff Spencer Arrowood back in time over 150 years to the case of Frankie Silver, the teenaged bride and mother who was hanged in North Carolina in 1832 for killing her husband with an ax, dismembering his body, and burning it in front of their baby daughter in their one-room cabin (an outrage that turned the locals against her more powerfully than the murder itself). Spencer has been haunted for years by Frankie's true-life case--a painful example, from arrest and trial to appeal and execution, of upper-class justice inflicted on a lower-class defendant--but even he wonders what possible connection this cause clbre can have to the even more sordid case of Harkryder, convicted of robbing, raping, and killing a pair of young lovers hiking the Appalachian Trail. As he delves more deeply into Frankie Silver's story--presented here through the eyes of court clerk Burgess GaitherSpencer comes ever closer to the last secret the doomed murderer took to her grave, while realizing that that knowledge may leave him as powerless to help Fate Harkryder as to mitigate the law for Frankie Silver herself. Though the weight of the evidence sifted makes this in some ways the most impressive of McCrumb's acclaimed Ballad series (The Rosewood Casket, 1996, etc.), the burden of numberless names, relations, pasts, and futures, which make the point about class justice a hundred times over, eventually sinks the modern-day narrative in conscientious local history. (Literary Guild selection; Mystery Guild main selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
From New York Times bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb comes the fifth novel set in the Appalachian wilderness blending legends and folklore with high suspense.

A career lawman will bear witness to the final judgement, as a man he put away twenty years ago is about to be excecuted for the brutal slaying of two hikers. However, his conscience is no longer clear to the point of absolute certainty about the man's guilt. Also of intense interest to the lawman is the parallel between the current events and a legendary murder and execution over 100 years old--the story of a great injustice, and a woman condemned to die for a crime she didn't commit. Suddenly, the sheriff finds himself in a race against and across time to see that history doesn't repeat itself!

Praise for The Ballad Of Frankie Silver:

"...a dense and lovely but very dark design that illustrates the social hypocrisy of the legal system as much as the harshness of mountain justice--then and now."-- The New York Times Book Review

"Reading a novel by Sharyn McCrumb is like listening to the movements of a symphony."--BookPage

"This novel will pass the test of time and be considered a classic in the years to come."--Harriet Klausner

"Sharyn McCrumb has dug more riches out of the Appalachians than some miners."-- Sunday World-Herald


Download Description
"From New York Times bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb comes the fifth novel set in the Appalachian wilderness blending legends and folklore with high suspense. A career lawman will bear witness to the final judgement, as a man he put away twenty years ago is about to be executed for the brutal slaying of two hikers. However, his conscience is no longer clear to the point of absolute certainty about the man?s guilt. Also of intense interest to the lawman is the parallel between the current events and a legendary murder and execution over 100 years old-- the story of a great injustice, and a woman condemned to die for a crime she didn?t commit. Suddenly, the sheriff finds himself in a race against and across time to see that history doesn?t repeat itself! "

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Spencer Arrowood was a young, untried deputy sheriff when his testimony helped convict a Tennessee youth for the brutal slaying of two hikers along the Appalachian Trail. Now, twenty years later, Spencer receives an invitation to an execution. After two decades on death row, a date has finally been set to strap Fate Harkryder into the chair and throw the switch. But time has eroded Spencer's moral certainty of guilt and raised the specter of another murder. Over a century ago, it is said that a man was murdered in his sleep, that a young wife and mother was accused of the crime, and that on the gallows her last words were silenced by her father's order. In 1833 Frankie Silver became the first woman in North Carolina to be hanged for murder. But what really happened so long ago becomes an obsession for Spencer Arrowood as the parallels between Frankie and Fate, between two crimes more than a hundred years apart, become as clear -- and as shocking -- as the single truth that joins two condemned souls. Suddenly, Spencer Arrowood is engaged in a race against time to keep history from happening all over again, and to save the life of a man who just may be innocent after all.

FROM THE CRITICS

Newsday

McCrumb has stitched together a vivid American heirloom.

Dallas Morning News

A writer of rare talent.

Marilyn Stasio

By working in two time frames and alternating the narrative voice, McCrumb threads both stories into a single pattern, a dense and lovely but very dark design that illustrates the social hypocrisy of the legal system as much as the harshness of mountain justice -- then and now.... McCrumb writes with a quiet fire and maybe a little mountain magic. Like every true storyteller, she has the Sight.
-- The New York Times Book Review

NY Times Book Review

A case of 19th-century frontier justice and the modern-day execution of a killer are interwoven in this Appalachian mountain tale of love, loyalty and murder.

NY Times Book Review