The Ballad of Frankie Silver
by Sharyn McCrumb
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sharyn McCrumbNarrator: C. M. Herbert
Edition: Audio Cassette
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Published: 1998-11
ISBN: 0786114436
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Book Reviews of The Ballad of Frankie Silver
Book Review: well, I really liked it
Summary: 5 Stars
This was the first book I read of this series. It was very interesting, or I wouldn't have stuck through it. If it was dull, or slow, i wouldn't have finished it because at the time i hadn't heard of the author or the series. All you people complaining sound like the people who complained that INSOMNIA by stephen king was too long (it was large, but the plot in INSOMNIA developed beautifully).
Summary of The Ballad of Frankie Silver
Frankie Silver was arrested in 1832: a small blonde girl, only eighteen, charged with the savage murder of her husband Charlie in their frontier cabin. Lafayette Harkryder was also eighteen when he was arrested, accused of the brutal killing of two young hikers. Two violent crimes, two trials - and two people whose refusal to speak out may well send them to their deaths, separated by one hundred and fifty years of Appalachian history. Burgess Gaither, a twenty-five-year-old-lawyer who witnessed the story from the discovery of Charlie Silver's body to the hanging of Frankie Silver, speaks for Frankie. Sherriff Spencer Arrowood, who arrested Fate Harkryder so many years ago, has been invited to his execution by the state of Tennessee. As the two stories unfold, Gaither and Arrowood both realize that both Frankie Silver and Fate Harkryder have hidden part of their stories - and may have shielded the truly guilty.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. --Dick Adler
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