Rating: 
Summary: McCrumb at the top of her form
Review: "In 1861 the Civil War reached the mountain South -- where the enemy was your neighbor, the victims were you friends, and the wrong army was whichever one you joined." Families split apart, war was an excuse for murder, and guerrillas fought old feuds.
In the latest of her "ballad series", McCrumb departs from her usual mystery format. Instead, she focuses on alternating stories of real historical characters with stories of people in the present attempting to connect with the past.
A group of Civil War re-enactors are playing at war, and Sheriff Spencer Arrowood, a recurring character in McCrumb's book, learns, to his surprise, that an Arrowood was killed in a battle that occurred after the war officially ended, and that he was a Union soldier.
The historical story lines are fascinating, and led me to do more research on the people. Zebulon Vance was a self-made man, lawyer and Congressman. Though he argued against secession, when war came, he became a Confederate officer, later becoming the Confederate governor of North Carolina and was a strong voice for the people of Appalachia. After the war, he eventually became Governor again, and ended his career in the United States Senate.
The other story is even more interesting. McKesson (Keith) Blalock was a Union sympathizer, but in Confederate North Carolina he was likely to be conscripted into the army. He enlisted, planning to desert and join the federal forces. But he didn't reckon that his troop's movements would make that difficult. He also didn't reckon on his wife, Malinda, following him, disguised as a man. The two eventually concoct a scheme to be discharged, and return home but Blalock's sympathies were known, and they were in danger. In time, both fled to the mountains, spending the war as guerrillas. This story, told through Malinda's voice, tells a side of the war that isn't taught much, where neighbor killed neighbor and relative killed relative.
Meanwhile, in the present, the re-enactors have, unintentionally, conjured up ghosts, ghosts who have ridden before, and who are seen by the likes of Nora Bonesteel and Rattler, who have the Sight, and by those who are dying. The veil between past and present is rent.
McCrumb has a real feel for language, and for getting into the skin of her characters. Malinda, particularly, struck me as being deeply understood. A lesser writer might have been tempted to draw her as an anachronism, to make her a "modern" woman, which would be terribly wrong. McCrumb respects her. She's a woman of her time and place, and, though unusual for that time and place, she was not unique.
Not an easy book to put down, though I admit to stopping now and again to do a bit of research into the characters and historical events McCrumb's writing about. That she led me to do that says a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Read!
Review: A superbly written Civil War yarn that intertwines the past with the present with a emotion charged ghostly spin.
'Ghost Riders' is undeniably one of the best books that I have ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: Historical fiction is becoming Sharyn McCrumb's forte
Review: Civil War re-enactors muster on foggy weekends to re-fight old battles between the North and the South on the mountainous border between North Carolina and Tennessee. Donning authentic uniforms from both sides and armed with muzzle loading, antique rifles, they camp out, play the old tunes and share legends and tales of a war that is still fought in the hearts and minds of modern day natives. They unwittingly conjure up the ghosts of real combatants from 140 years past who hover on horseback on the fringes of the camp.Malinda Blalock is furious that her hotheaded husband Keith has signed on with the Confederates. Facing conscription under a recently passed law, he could either flee to Kentucky to sign on with the Union, where his sympathies lie, or enlist, go AWOL and join the Union Army when he gets into battle. Fleeing could cost him his farm, endanger his wife, and probably find him at the end of a rope, so he decides on the latter. His wife Malinda, who can shoot and ride as well as he, and not one to sit on the sidelines and knit until her husband returns, disguises herself as a boy and sets off to join him. The pair ends up as outlaws, guiding refugees through the mountain passes and helping those left behind. Not, however, without bloodshed and hardship, as they hide out in caves in the rugged Appalachian hills. Or heartbreak, as they leave behind loved ones, including their own son, in their pursuit of justice. Zebulon Vance, a prominent Raleigh attorney with political ambitions, is equally torn in his allegiance, but is reluctantly pulled into heading up a division of Confederate soldiers. He rises to the rank of governor of North Carolina, and we see the war through his eyes, both as a militarist and as one who must try to govern a state almost evenly divided in its loyalties. These three historical figures exemplify the rift between brothers, friends and neighbors as the war divides a nation and threatens the future of the Union. Based on historical documents, letters and speeches, McCrumb brings these and other figures from their ghostly past into sharp focus. Only Rattler, a reclusive backwoodsman, and Nora Bonesteel, both blessed with "the sight," sense the possibly ominous presence of a band of ghostly horsemen who appear to a few unwitting bystanders during the re-enactments. GHOST RIDERS works as an effective device to meld the past with the present, while casting light on how the South is changing with the encroachment of Northerners who have no interest or axe to grind nearly a century-and-a-half after one of the most devastating events in American history. Sharyn McCrumb's stature as a historical novelist grows with each succeeding book. THE SONGCATCHER, which chronicles the collection of traditional Appalachian ballads, was made into a movie, and both the book and the movie drew critical acclaim. McCrumb is also well known for her humorous Elizabeth MacPherson mysteries. GHOST RIDERS accurately brings to life the sense of place and personal conflicts of the 19th and 21st centuries. --- Reviewed by Roz Shea
Rating:
Summary: Epic- Brilliant!- Get Ready for a Late Night of Reading!
Review: Ghost Riders is fantastic! It is so well written and historically accurate. McCrumb seamlessly goes back and forth between the present and the past. You will have no trouble keeping up with the story line and the different characters. I highly recommend Ghost Riders! Once you start it you won't want to put it down. It's that good!
Rating:
Summary: Ghost Riders Bust Out!
Review: I loved this book! It has memorable characters and lots of history interwoven to produce a wonderful story. The book requires that the reader pay attention and not just glide over the information.
Rating:
Summary: What a terrific book
Review: I've been a longtime fan of McCrumb, reading almost all her books. For years I thought "She Walks These Hills" was the best. But "Ghost Riders" challenges that book's position! It's not only a wonderfully written page turner that kept me up way too late, but also gave new insight into the area's history. The Malinda character is especially well-drawn. (I grew up in, and one side of my family has lived in, the Smokies around Asheville, Tryon and Morganton for generations, and McCrumb's characters and terminology are on target. She has a great sense of place. And as a now-Floridian who often returns I know her accounts of the relationship between natives and Floridians are all too true, although a very minor part of the book. I was only sorry that it ended, and only wish there was more about her contemporary chracters. I totally and highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: deep comparative look at generations over a century apart
Review: In 1861 when it comes to joining a side in the war, people living in the Southern Appalachia believe neither side is right because someone will detest you for signing up with the wrong team. When her husband Keith signs on with the Confederacy due to the pay, Malinda Blalock cuts her hair and joins too as his younger brother Sam. They try to receive a discharge, but soon become avenging outlaws even while a mountain peer Zebulon Vance somehow becomes governor of North Carolina. At the same time except in the year is 2003, Civil War reenactment actors in the Appalachians reenacts a violent incident from 1862 when suddenly ghosts of Confederate soldiers appear. Local residents Rattler and Nora Bonesteel try to use their special gifts to calm the angry ghosts and assist them in moving on to the next plane. Readers who enjoy a complete package with no finality need to look elsewhere. However, those fans that appreciate a deep comparative look at generations over a century apart with the ending of each "tale" left to the imagination will value the powerful GHOST RIDERS. As expected Sharyn McCrumb provides her audience with a strong story line filled with wonderful protagonists as she displays why she is so good at bringing together contemporary and historical perspectives as few writers can do. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Ghost Riders--The End of the Trail
Review: In author Sharyn McCrumb's "Ghost Riders" her thematic characters of Sheriff Spencer Arrowood and cast of local West-Carolina characters may have reached then end of a happy trail. Had this book been published before "Cold Mountain" it would have been regarded as an insightful exploration of pockets of discontent within the Confederacy. Because "Ghost Riders" came out after "Cold Mountain," McCrumb's more readable book, however, must take a backseat in the originality category.
Likewise, this book lacks innovation in several of its parallel story lines. Women dressing up as men to follow their husband's to war have been recounted numerous times. Apparitions around battlefields are also old news or no news at all. Likewise, gazing up at the stars and conceptualizing that they were as thick as eggs laid on the water by a frog is reminiscent of a similar conversation between Huck and Jim in Twain's "Huck Finn."
The book's strength is in its telling of historical fact in a fictionalized fashion. Such books, like "The Killer Angels," give the average reader a continuity and connectivity to history that cannot be achieved thru history courses that dwell on, at worst, chronology and, at best, context. In this context Zebulon Vance, the wartime governor of North Carolina, is the best-portrayed character in McCrumb's book.
Some of the parallel stories could have been left out of McCrumb's book completely. Tom Gentry's journey out of the modern world and into the modern wilderness adds little to the book. The character "Rattler" is also weak and nominally provides a vehicle to interweave the other plots and players.
McCrumb's books have been valuable to me during a time of convalescence in which I eagerly read all of her "Arrowood" series. These books brought back many memories of family stories that have been passed down by my family for generations. I am disappointed in "Ghost Riders" because it simply did not have the substance and suspense of her earlier volumes. In addition, Ghost Riders came to an abrupt end with many threads left dangling, not as a mechanism to lead into the next volume, simply the trail went cold.
Rating:
Summary: Spencer Arrowood is superfluous
Review: McCrumb's premise in GHOST RIDERS is that the Civil War in Appalachia never did end. In her author's note she compares it to the war in Bosnia. In order to dramatize this notion, McCrumb uses modern-day reenactors who attract the ghosts of the Civil War soldiers who died in the mountains but were unable to pass into the next world.
I ordered this book a couple of months before it was published so obviously I enjoy McCrumb's work, but I had trouble getting into this one, mainly because of the multiple viewpoints and the shifting back and forth from modern Appalachia to the 1860s. Also, as she did with Frankie Silver, McCrumb tries to fictionalize historical personages, namely Malinda "Sam" Blalock and Governor Zebulon Baird Vance (Tom Dooley even makes a cameo appearance). Blalock fought alongside her husband in the Civil War and Baird was governor of North Carolina. When she flashes back in time, Baird is the protagonist as is Blalock. In modern day Appalachia we have Sheriff Arrowood and Nora Bonesteel, as well as Rattler.
Because of these shifting viewpoints the novel never does gather any momentum. In McCrumb's earlier work, Spensor Arrowood was the center who made McCrumb's psychic elements believable. In this one he's almost a superfluous character, as is Nora Bonesteel.
Rating:
Summary: Fun to read
Review: Ms McCrumb did an excellent job! Her book is entertaining, informative (regarding the history of the Appalachians), and her prose was a joy to read. Other reviewers didn't appreciate her style of going back and forth between the past and present characters, but I thought it worked well into the story, and gave the novel another dimension. After reading Ghost Riders, I plan to read Ms McCrumb's other books; as I really enjoyed her writing style.
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