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50 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Oh, dear... not the homecoming for which I'd hoped., April 30, 2010
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I was so very excited to open this book -- the first new story in the Ballad series in ever so long. However, from the start, it is clear that this is not your usual Sharyn McCrumb novel. She has taken a true story, a murder in the Appalachian hill country of the Ballad novels, set in 1935. But rather than deal with the story, the why's and wherefore's, and, most of all, the marvelous cast that McCrumb usually brings to these stories, the story is told from the perspective of the reporters sent to cover the trial. On the one hand, three New York reporters and their photographer, do their best to ignore every detail that doesn't match their preconceived notion of how the back country ought to be, even to the extent of manufacturing scenes of waifs in shacks for their own convenience. On the other hand, an earnest young reporter from nearby Tennessee is on hand, actually trying to see the truth of the story, but it isn't pretty or appealing in any way and his reports aren't doing his fledgling career any good at all. Nora Bonesteel, the protagonist of many of the Ballad novels, makes a rather brief appearance as a 12 year old girl, and then in the epilogue as an elderly woman remembering the events for a young law researcher. Frankly, the epilogue was my favorite chapter of the book. It *felt* right -- it was compelling and it went somewhere. The majority of the book felt like a real chore, and I have to think that it was for the writer. I think McCrumb set out to tell a particular story in a particular way and kept on even when it didn't work for her. I'm ever so sorry about that. Scenes from the sojourn in Japan of one of the New York reporters are interesting but lend nothing to the main story, really. Again, it is like McCrumb became interested with a particular vignette out of history and was determined to get it into this book, whether it fit or not. Actually, I think it might have worked better if the Japanese sideline had been the main tale, although it comprises at least a third of the book and so it almost is. Here's hoping the next one is back on track for everyone, as I don't imagine this any more fun to write than it was to read. Darn it.
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth waiting for..., April 27, 2010
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If you are new to McCrumb or the Ballad novels, I wouldn't start with this book. Part of the fun is reading about 12-year old Nora Bonesteel, who's been featured as a steely-eyed intimidating elder in earlier novels. At first I missed the format McCrumb has used earlier with so much success. I love her novels when she goes back and forth between time periods, tracing seeds of current conflict back to much earlier times. I didn't find the journalists especially appealing. And in some ways the novel shares themes with McCrumb's earlier novel about Frankie Silver. But McCrumb's ballad novels deserve to be read deeply, more than once. As with novels like Rosewood Casket, McCrumb introduces a cast of characters, awkwardly thrown together, each with his or her own story. In this case a horde of "big city" newspaper reporters have come to write about a beautiful young woman who's accused of murdering her father. The young woman's brother has arranged representation and has sold the story to raise money for hiring good lawyers...or so he claims. On the one hand, the story focuses on the reporters who struggle to cover the story in a way that will please their readers and editors. If that means creating a drama and even faking some scenes, so be it. The idea is to picture justice in the backwoods of America, to create a contrast, even if the backwoods no longer exists (and maybe never did). Only Nora's cousin Carl refuses to play along because he's from the country himself. Some of the novel's best bits of writing come when Carl reads between the lines of the country men he encounters, reminiscent of the delicious social commentary sprinkling the McPherson series. Front and center, the storyline considers Erma Morton, attractive and better educated than most of her female contemporaries. We visit her prison cell and as the book unfolds, we understand what really happened that night in her home. Unlike Frankie Silver, Erma is educated and a little sardonic about her situation. She understands her role: she's a pawn for the news media. It's not really about her at all, she realizes, and we readers wonder how many famous and not-so-famous defendants have shared her thought. That's the third theme, unfolding with different degrees of subtlety through the novel. Justice sometimes gets skewed to serve public and private economic interests. McCrumb hints at a large theme whe she introduces the story of Mary the elephant who was hanged for no rational reason. Anyone who's cynical about justice, even today, might question how many convictions are upheld for reasons that do not benefit the greater society. We could even draw a parallel with the Amanda Knox case, but I leave that to readers to ponder after they've read and digested this book. Throughout the novel McCrumb introduces pieces of history, such as a cameo appearance by the Carter family. They slow down the action but I suspect readers won't mind. My own Ballad favorite so far is Rosewood Casket. Devil Amongst the Lawyers has equally strong writing and plot. While I was glad to see a new volume in the series, I hope McCrumb will set her next Ballad closer to the present and I hope she doesn't wait so long. Unlike Nora Bonesteel, I can't predict whether I'll be around to see the last of the series and I'd hate to miss even one.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Puzzling and less than compelling, May 15, 2010
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This book was a puzzlement to me. From the title I expected to hear a lot about the lawyers in a case of murder in the Appalachian region of southern Virginia. Instead, I heard a lot about the big city reporters who came to cover it. The defendant was a pretty young woman who came home from college in the mid-1930's to teach school in her home town and was accused of killing her father. It was the early days of mass media, and suddenly the whole country was getting every detail of such small-town dramas as was about to unwind here. A pretty, educated girl was about to be railroaded by her backwoods neighbors who resented her improving herself. The fact that this was a wild exaggeration was no deterrent. The public wanted to believe in hillbilly justice, and the big city reporters were going to give them what they wanted. This was the gist of the story I found here. Earlier McCrumb ballad novels told about the people of southern Virginia and northeastern Tennessee. This time she told of those who would stereotype them and throw truth to the wind to satisfy their readers. She included one reporter from a nearby Tennessee newspaper, plus Nora Bonesteel, a fixture in her novels as one who has the Sight and has glimpses of the future. At this time she is 14. These two know the truth and try to tell it, to no avail. Another puzzlement is the introduction of the Japanese influence on one of the New York reporters who came to cover the story. It seemed to have no tie to the events taking place except to make his character more complex. He was an erudite snob who felt his readers should work to understand him instead of the other way around. His sometime companion was what was being called a sob sister, a woman who was far from pretty and expected little from those around her. The photographer who accompanied them went out of his way to find barefoot children and entice them to wear their grandparents' clothes for his pictures. Not an attractive threesome. I felt that McCrumb was getting even with the intruders who had all too often sought the differences in the mountain people rather than the similarities to their fellow countrymen. However, I found the tale less than compelling. In the early part of the book I had some difficulty staying awake. All in all, if the book is approached with no expectations, it is interesting, and she does tell us at the end what happened to everyone with the advent of World War II and with it a whole new world.
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