Rating: 
Summary: LYRIC PROSE
Review: When I turned the last page of The Ballad of Frankie Silver I remember thinking "this is the best book I've ever read". Sharyn McCrumb's prose reads like poetry, not a single word or emotion wasted and everything she says contributes to the quality of the whole. You are never rushing through parts of the story, but instead savor every word. I just wish there were more books like it! What's so interesting is to think that the same woman who wrote Bimbo's of the Death Sun (the first of her books I read) wrote Frankie Silver. The woman's a verbal chameleon! This book caught and held my interest from the first chapter to the final page and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I was so intrigued by the subject and story itself that I ended up doing a web search about Frankie Silver and realized just how much actual history McCrumb has woven into her story. One reviewer called her Ballad Books the "jewel in her crown", a statement I wholeheartedly agree with, and having read all of the Ballad Books I believe Frankie Silver stands above the rest. I fantastic story!
Rating:
Summary: Storytelling at its best
Review: I do so much like Sharyn McCrumb's Appalachian so much better than her Elizabeth MacPherson novels, though I will not stop reading the. But in the Appalachian series, she captures so much of the flavor of the area that they become books the reader cannot put down. She does not fail in this book. She particularly has the skill of combining three stories together, whether one be in the past and one the future, and in the end all of them coming together, thereby always making a cohesive, dramatic ending. The present-day story in this book is about an upcoming electrocution of Fate Harkryder for murder. The story of the future concerns Frankie Silver who brutally murdered her husband in 1832 (or did she?). But wait, there is then a third murder in the book. What do the three have in common? That is the mystery in this book. As another review put it, this book all encompasses the story of the Celts versus the English - from the past down to even the present. It still makes for good reading.
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