The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, published in 1992, introduced Sharyn McCrumb's portrait of life in Dark Hollow, Tennessee, a small town in the Appalachian mountains. This novel was a Mystery Guild Selection.Main characters begin with Nora Bonesteel, an elderly woman with the gift of Sight. Her house is on a mountaintop that faces the nearby mountain showing the Hangman's face. People come to her for help. One of her friends is Jane Arrowood, widowed mother of Sheriff Spencer Arrowood. Spencer'...

This book is an odd one. Sharyn McCrumb obviously does a great deal of research to make her books authentic to the Appalachian people. It was an interesting read, as far as details go and learning something new about an unfamiliar culture.The story/stories were well-told. None of the stories ever actually had a point, which in this book wasn't really a problem. I enjoyed it anyway. It was like listening to somebody tell a story about something that happened to them, just because they liked to ta...

Since I live in East Tennessee about 2 hours from where this story was set, I had a special interest already. I love the way McCrumb is respectful of the beliefs and practices of the mountain people. The story kept my interest until the end.

McCrumb does a wonderful job in describing the mountains and people. I adore her use of old-time folk lore to enhance the story. In this tale, two brothers and the parents are brutally murdered by the oldest son, who also takes his own life. The story has other tragedies besides this: the burning death of a young mother, the environmental cancer death of an old man, the stillborn death of the preacher's wife. But, amid all this heartbreak is inspiration and hope; and a sense of renewal. I thorou...

This is my second book by Sharyn McCrumb, and I liked this one best. She has such a way of transporting me to backwoods Tennessee. I feel like I'm sitting on somebody's porch, listening to Uncle Asa tell stories. This story just meanders on down the hill, taking its own sweet time. In this book, there are actually several tales being told, each a complete story on its own, but woven together to create a fascinating tapestry. There are plenty of diversions and side trips, just to keep things inte...

The sense of place in this book is so real you can feel the mountain shadows lengthen. I identify with the characters so much I can almost feel their pain. Loved Maggie and was so angry at those who failed to help her and Mark when they needed it. Nora Bonesteel is a wonderful character you'd love to meet in life. The only criticism would be that I thought the Justin Warrren camp of wanna-be soldiers didn't serve much purpose. They seemed extraneous. Overall a great read.

“The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter” is the second installment of her Appalachian Ballad series, and was the third of said series that I’ve had the pleasure to read (while several characters are re-occurring, these ballads need not be read in order, and are all easily enjoyable as stand-alones).McCrumb deftly displays both the beauty and the hardship of the Celtic heritage, prevalent in the Appalachian area. In this particular tale, McCrumb weaves several storylines simultaneously: we are acquaint...

In the prologue we find ourselves with the aging Nora Bonesteel, up on Ashe Mountain with her needlework, pet whistle pig (hedgehog to most of us), and her Scottish 'sight'. Nora is unsettled, ultimately starting a new quilt, one of a graveyard scene. Death is coming soon to the Underhill family in Dark Hollow. This quilt image on the front of the Kindle Edition I read is exactly as described in the book, even to the fabric textures. I wish there was attribution for the cover quilt in the e...

Modern/contemporary general fiction hasn't formed the largest bloc of my reading --not because I don't like it, but just because, at the specific times when I've picked books to read over the years, selections from the other genres have usually happened to overshadow anything from this one. And I greatly enjoy both the supernatural (as well as other speculative) and mystery genres. So it's perhaps not surprising that when I do read general fiction, some of what I'm attracted to has elements of o...

There doesn't seem to be any genre Mccrumb hasn't mastered. This is a broad sweep of a community high up in Eastern Tennessee with real people doing real things..........plus someone with 2nd sight. Some plot twists are so delicious they will stay in my memory for a long time. A must read for anyone who loves a well told story.

Perhaps I am cynical, but I knew the reason for the murder from the first pages. Waiting for everyone else to figure it out was nerve wracking to say the least. THe subplot involving the minister's wife and her baby felt tacked on me, it served no real purpose except to jack up the tears quotient for the reader.

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, written by Sharyn McCrumb, is about a case of a murder-suicide, of a family that no one had really known. There’s a woman, Nora Bonesteel, who has a gift of “the sight”. She can’t exactly see what she wants with this murder, “Something has been troubling me lately, it devils me when I sleep and when I’m awake” so she quilts with no set pattern and she makes a valley with 6 tombstones. It is suspected that the eldest son had killed his family, but Laura Bruce, th...

This story is as odd as the several mountain stories that are told within it. Nora Bonesteel has the second sight and she often has the coffee poured and plates of cookies out arleady when the visitor comes up the road. She is the character around whom the story is told although she is not the main character. There is a terrible tragedy and four members of the Underhill family are dead and the remaining two children are dazed and left without kin to take them in. There are several more stories w...

In the used bookstore a few days ago I asked the clerk for a mystery recommendation. This was one of them. While it isn't objectively bad, I just didn't enjoy it. I realized tonight that I was coming up with any excuse to not pick it up and finish. So I quickly skimmed the last half and guess what? It was more of the same. This isn't a mystery even though it's categorized as a crime novel - the killer is named very early on. At times it seemed to be dealing with environmental issues, then small

Although there is a mystery with things not really being as they appear, this book is more a collection of Southern story-telling with a fey old woman who sometimes sees the future. It's almost a series of short stories, tied together in the framework of a quilt the old woman is creating. Two parents and a young boy are murdered by an older son who commits suicide, leaving two siblings behind. The minister's wife, in his absence because of being deployed as a chaplain to the midEast, is a connec...

Another one that could do with a half star. However, what I loved about this book was that it wove in Shakespeare, the Irish heritage of Appalachia, and the ballads that nurture the area so beautifully. In a lot of ways it reminded me of "Christy" - it's not necessarily a compelling story, but a compelling setting and characters. The mystery is, quite frankly, a sideline.I look forward to reading more of her novels.

Now I remember why I loved books from this series decades ago: the wonderful but unforgiving landscape of the Appalachians, Nora Bonesteel, who has "the sight", Sheriff Spencer Arowood, who tries his darnedest to take care of the people in his county, John Le Donne, who is dealing with PTSD from Vietnam and Martha who is trying to help him, old friends who try to fight pollution of their beloved river, and Laura Bruce, the pregnant preacher's wife who is feeling out of place in this unusual comm...

I enjoyed this one better than the last. The characters in the book are done well my fav being Vernon Woolwine who has numerous costumes that he wears daily and Nora is the perfect old crone living quite remotely.Will keep reading this author

This one just didn't hit home for me. It seemed to lack a lot of depth and tried to tackle too many storylines and topics at once, considering it's part of a larger series that could have dealt with some of these things better in individual books.

Another really good book from Sharyn McCrumb. I started reading this one as I spent the weekend in the Appalachian hills near the setting of her books. It isn't a typical 'whodunnit' mystery, but rather explores several issues that affect several lives in the aftermath of a tragic shooting. There is plenty to think about, and to me the most interesting issue was the one not overtly explored: how otherwise good, honest, and caring people can still be self-absorbed enough to miss the tragedies bre...