The Ballad Of Frankie Silver (1999) - Plot & Excerpts
There's a bit less going on in this book than there is in most of the Ballad series.The general theme behind this book is miscarriages of justice - people accused and put to death for a crime they didn't commit but wouldn't confess who did. And considering the theme, it makes sense that there's only two examples/story threads instead of the normal 4 or 5 that are going on. Maybe there could have been more plot threads added by generalizing the connecting theme, but that might have trivialized given the main stories less impact. And death does deserve a lot of attention.Yet, due to there only being two stories and not much detail given about one of them until late in the novel, the majority of the book is Frankie Silver's story. While good, this did lead to rather longer scenes than I'm used to with this particular series.Also, there seemed to be less parallels early on between Frankie and Fate's story -- the scenes didn't really sync up quite like they should until about halfway through the book. Once the halfway point was reached, the stories seemed to mesh like I've come to expect in this book.Between the longer scenes and lack of parallels between the two stories, the first half of the book passed a bit too slowly for my tastes. Yet, the second half of the book was wonderful, with everything coming together perfectly. The desparate, doomed scrambling for last minute reprieves and the final closing soliloquies of both Frankie and Fate made me choke up a bit.Since I'm keeping a running count, I'd say this is my third favorite ballad novel so far, behind She Walks These Hills and The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter.
**edited 12/04/13Frankie Silver was not quite what I expected from the description. It does indeed interweave the present-day with the past, but it is the past where McCrumb focuses her energy and narrative. The two present-day cases only add a frame of reference and a sense of immediacy and connection to that long-ago crime. In the present day, Tennessee Sheriff Spencer Arrowood, laid up at home due to injuries during a shootout, is brooding on the upcoming execution of a man he helped to put behind bars. Mentally, he begins to link the case to that of Frankie Silver, an eighteen-year-old girl tried for the murder and savage decapitation of her husband in the early 1800s. Frankie was subsequently found guilty hung by the neck until dead, but her death only added to the case's sense of incompleteness-- how could she have had the sheer strength to chop up her husband so brutally? What were her last words to be when they were silenced by her father? The book quickly delves into the past, and Frankie's story is told alternately from her own point of view and that of the clerk of the court.Due to my disapproval of GR's new and rather subjective review deletion policy, The rest of my (rather verbose and quote-filled) review is posted over here at Booklikes.
What do You think about The Ballad Of Frankie Silver (1999)?
I never imagined that the story of two double murders and a woman who hacked her husband to death with an axe could be mind-numbingly boring, but Sharyn McCrumb was able to do it. I can't tell you how many pages of intertwining family trees I read through, willing my poor brain to keep them all in order, until I finally realized that they were going to have nothing, NOTHING to do with ANYTHING. How many times could we be reminded about how small and young Frankie was? How many letters sent to the governor did we have to hear explained, and then forced to read? How many completely uninteresting and pointless characters did we have to be forced to meet? By the end of the book I couldn't have cared less about a single one of them.All in all, a waste of time and money.
—Elyse
This is an interesting plot linking execution of murderers 165 years apart. Frankie Silver is arrested, tried and found guilty of murdering her husband in 1832. Fate Harkryder has been on death row for 20 years for the murders of two hikers on the Appalachian Trail. Sheriff Spencer Arrowood has received notice that he must witness the execution of Harkryder, but he is haunted by the feeling that Fate is not guilty. His reinvestigation of this 20 year old case prompts him to also reinvestigate the case of Frankie Silver. McCrumb writes an excellent story with great characterization. I found it tedious at times especially when she describes the 1832 Morganton residents whom all seem to be related by marriage. It was beginning to sound like the Bible with all the begats. In her author's notes, she explains why she felt the need to do this. She also threw in two other murders--one current(no need for it all) and one involving an attorney shooting another attorney in a courtroom (added to show the injustice of Frankie's sentence), but I felt they interfered with the flow of the story.
—Peggy
Excellent book for those of us who love North Carolina history, and yes, I was even very interested in the genealogy of the western North Carolina aristocracy. I read Sharyn McCrumb's book about Tom Dula, and in both books she brings to life the hard life of the backwoods settler--with survival as the primary motive of everyday life. Most interesting is the closing "Author's Note" in which Ms McCrumb suggests something that is not often recognized--the keen difference between flatland South and mountain South. Those of us who grew up in the foothills between these two worlds know all too well which of our own ancestors qualify as flatland and which ones are mountain.
—Susan
