From Library Journal
A tale of an escaped convict from Edgar Award winner McCrumb.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The hills along the border where Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina meet are full of walkers in Edgar-winner McCrumb's third Ballad-series story, but just miles from the Appalachian Trail, the wanderers meet each other only rarely. First among them is Katie Wyler, a teenage North Carolina settler kidnapped by Shawnees in 1779; escaping near the Ohio River, Katie plunged back through the wilderness, only to die the day she returned to her neighbors' home. Katie's ghost shares these hills with other troubled souls: a 63-year-old escaped convict, his memory befuddled by Korsakoff's syndrome; the convict's ex-wife and daughter; an isolated, frightened young mountain girl with a brutal husband and a crying baby; East Coast transplants Hank "the Yank" Kretzer, who checks out the convict's 25-year-old crime for his radio talk show (think of Chris on TV's Northern Exposure), and history graduate student Jeremy Cobb, obsessed with his dissertation topic (Katie Wyler), intent on following her centuries-old trail through the hills; and Martha Ayers, striving to move up from dispatcher to deputy on Sheriff Spencer Arrowood's staff while coping with Deputy Joe LeDonne's personal betrayal. As in her other Ballad novels, If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O (1990) and The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1992), McCrumb celebrates her home country, probes the multilayered puzzles of past and present, and meditates on human suffering and the survival instinct with sensitivity and compassion. Mary Carroll
From Kirkus Reviews
The latest in McCrumb's Ballad series (The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, 1992, etc.) takes off from the legendary tale of Katie Wyler. Kidnapped by the Shawnee in 1779, her escape took her hundreds of miles back to her family in Tennessee before ending in tragedy. Now four people are retracing, mostly unconsciously, the steps of her famous escape. Jeremy Cobb, the most deliberate of the four, is a young historian looking for a new angle for his dissertation on Katie and hoping that a few nights under the stars will reveal to him the same visions that second-sighted old Nora Bonesteel has had. At the same time, Sabrina Harkryder, a hillbilly bride locked in combat with her husband's family, is reliving Katie's life in a much more literal, hopeless way. And Hiram Sorley, an aging convict whose Korsakoff's syndrome has trapped his brain in 1968, when he was sentenced to 99 years for murder, has escaped from prison and is making a beeline to the wife he thinks is still 20 years old. Even Martha Ayers, longtime police dispatcher and acting deputy, finds uncomfortable parallels between her own life and Katie's while she's out looking for Hiram. Before all the trails end, there'll be two more homicides, a suicide, a case of maddened arson capped by still another death, and enough sad satisfaction for three novels. By turns funny, probing, elegiac, and as wise about history as McCrumb has ever been: another stellar performance from one of the best. (Mystery Guild main selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From the Inside Flap
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About the Author
Sharyn McCrumb is the author of several bestselling novels, including The Rosewood Casket, She Walks These Hills, and The Ballad of Frankie Silver, which was nominated for a Southeast Booksellers Association award. She has received awards for Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature and Southern Writer of the Year. Her books have been named notable books of the year by both The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. She lives in Virginia.
McCrumb is an extraordinary mystery writer. Along with producing a twisty plot, she writes lyrically of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, which she adores. Herbert enchants as she narrates this mythical story starring ancient and contemporary characters. Magic and superstition pervade life and language, all of which Herbert accurately represents as she tells the story of a 60-year-old escaped murderer; a college professor who is following the trail of a pioneer woman; and Hank the Yank, zany radio talk-show host. The story is enhanced by the narrator's ability to make these challenging characters come to life, giving the listener a REAL slice of Appalachia. S.G.B. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
