After finishing Sharyn McCrumb's novel, The Ballad of Frankie Silver, I find myself thinking about it at odd hours – in the middle of the night (sleep, who needs it?), mid-morning (work, who needs it?), at two in the afternoon (work??) – and then discussing it anytime, anywhere with anyone who would listen.

Sharyn McCrumb weaves fact and fiction, past and present, to explore classic themes – the pursuit of truth, the impact of inequality, the route to justice. The Edgar-award winning author hails from the Smoky Mountain area straddling Tennessee and North Carolina and is an expert guide on a literary journey to Appalachia, its history and lore.

The Ballad of Frankie Silver is the fifth novel in McCrumb's Ballad series, and readers of the earlier books will welcome the return of Tennessee Sheriff Spencer Arrowood and his deputies, Martha Ayers and Joe LeDonne. Less familiar is McCrumb's technique of having the Sheriff sit back as he recuperates from a nearly deadly gunshot wound, researching a 150 year-old murder case.

Spencer Arrowood feels a need to come to terms with a twenty year-old case which has come back to haunt him and he senses a link between it and the unsolved murder of Charlie Silver in 1830. Though he is on medical leave, the Sheriff has been summoned by the State of Tennessee to witness an execution. Passing off this duty is appealing, but Arrowood realizes he must face his own demons in order to heal completely and return to his job as an effective Sheriff.

As a young, self-assured deputy sheriff , Spencer was on duty when a call came in about a gruesome double murder on the nearby Appalachian Trail. Spencer investigated the murder, arrested poor, ignorant, teenaged Fate Harkryder, testified at the boy's trial, and helped deliver the convicted murderer to prison. That day, the former sheriff took his young deputy on a side-trip, over the border into North Carolina, to visit the three graves of Charlie Silver.

Now, Fate Harkryder sits on death row, awaiting execution for the rape and murder of two college students more than twenty years ago.

While the moral dilemma of capital punishment occupies both of McCrumb's tales, the jacket photo of the three graves of Charlie Silver sets the tone for this book. Not only is there an unsolved 1830's murder, with accompanying folklore, but there is a cemetery which has not one but three gravestones for one dead man. The stones mark the burial sites of the victim's dismembered body. Was Frankie Silver punished for the murder? Was she punished for the frightening method of disposing of the evidence? Was she punished because she was too ignorant to defend herself? Was she protecting someone?

The author tells Frankie Silver's tale primarily through the eyes of circuit court clerk, Burgess Gaither, but some of the tale is told poignantly by the young woman herself. This approach is mirrored in the twentieth-century story with a nearly equal amount of musings by Fate Harkryder, interspersed with the story told by Sheriff Arrowood. The juxtaposition of the four voices is very effective.

Throughout this book, the author's shifts back and forth from the nineteenth-century to the twentieth. I would become so engrossed in following the tale of Frankie, her extended family, and the inhabitants of Morganton, that I would not want to leave them to return to the twentieth century. Soon after, in the hands of this gifted storyteller I would become engrossed in the modern tale and feel reluctant to tear myself away when it was "time" to return to the 1830's.

The twentieth-century thread is pure fiction and McCrumb is holding the pen; she cannot shape Frankie's tale so easily, and it dominates the book. Ms McCrumb plays the role of historian, holding her version out as more nearly true than otherwise. Clearly, the author's opinions about capital punishment's serving societal goals, social inequality's affecting the justice system, and the limits of judicial institutions' uncovering truth all color her version of the historical truth in the Frankie Silver case, no less than they determine Spencer Arrowood's attempts to figure out whether Fate did murder the Appalachian Trail hikers.

Earlier books in Sharyn McCrumb's Ballad series are If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O (1990), The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1992), She Walks These Hills (1994), and The Rosewood Casket (1996). You need not have read these earlier books in order to enjoy The Ballad of Frankie Silver. But once you read one, you will want to read them all.

--Sue Klock