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- Sharyn McCrumb's
fans have come to expect excellent storytelling juxtaposing the history
and folklore of Appalachian culture past and present. Ghost Riders
doesn't disappoint.
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- When the local
re-enactors -- journalists, lawyers, and teachers – start seeing starving
soldiers with unusually authentic uniforms, Rattler and Nora Bonesteel,
locals with the "gift of sight" become uncomfortable. They realize how
closely intertwined the living are with the dead and the importance of
preventing clashes between the two. As the present day re-enactors play
out their roles, so do 1860s mountain folk Keith and Malinda Blalock.
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- Malinda, unwilling
to entrust her husband's life to the military, follows him from a
distance, enlisting as "Sam," in order to protect him. The Blalocks knew,
"Being loyal to the Union in a Rebel state would put you and all your
kinfolk in mortal danger. But it didn't make us loyal Confederate
citizens. It only made us careful." When Keith is discharged, Malinda
reveals her secret to Zebulon Baird Vance, and returns home. Keith's
reluctance to take up arms again puts the couple in danger. Rather than
rejoin the county militia, Keith and Malinda become outlaws determined to
avenge the deaths of their kin and neighbors at the hands of the
- Confederates.
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- Ghost Riders,
rich in historical detail, is McCrumb at her finest.
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- Sharyn McCrumb, who
lives in the Virginia Blue Ridge, is a native North Carolinian. Her home
is less than a hundred miles from where her family settled (in 1790) in
the Smoky Mountains dividing North Carolina and Tennessee. Her previous
novels include: The Songcather, The Rosewood Casket, She Walks
These Hills, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, and
If I Ever Return, Pretty
Peggy-O.
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Pam Kingsbury
- Southern Scribe
Reviews
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2003, Southern Scribe Reviews, All Rights Reserved
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