He’s an award-winning bluegrass musician, and he often tours with me now. 'I realized that some people didn’t even recognize the song reference in some of the titles, so I devised a program with a folk singer, Jack Hinshelwood. I try to get into their heads via the music.'ĭuring her tours and readings for the previous ballad books (which include The Songcatcher, The Rosewood Casket, The Ballad of Frankie Silver, and If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O) McCrumb noticed that people outside the Appalachian region, even great fans of her novels, were not familiar with the music that was tied to them. I use a lot of Irish music: harp, hammered dulcimer, fiddle tunes. So while I’m working on a particular scene, I listen to music that the character would listen to. 'When I’m developing a character,' she explains in a telephone interview, 'one of the things I ask myself is what music does this person listen to? I have a theory that people who listen to Eminem, for example, and people who listen to Bach probably don’t have the same speech patterns, or even the same cadences.

Set in the Appalachian Mountain region of North Carolina and Tennessee, the books are inspired, or perhaps more accurately fortified, by musical soundtracks she compiles herself before beginning the writing process. McCrumb’s latest book, Ghost Riders, continues the immensely popular ballad novel series for which she is best known. Sharyn McCrumb is just the author to unearth the facts, sprinkle them with a little mountain magic and bring them to life in her fiction. There are stories hidden in the hills and hollers of Appalachia, and you can find them if you do your homework.

Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb