Title: The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
Author: Sharyn McCrumb
Publication: 2 April 1992
Format: hardcover
Website Description
From the chestnut blight of the 1930's to industrial water pollution today, this novel looks at environmental issues and the issue of environmental responsibility. In this novel, sorrow comes to the mountain community in the guise of a murder/suicide on a remote farm and via a polluted river that brings death into the valley. Nora Bonesteel, with her graveyard quilt and her herbal remedies, does what she can to protect the ordinary folk from tragedy. This is a wonderful novel to trace the continuance of Celtic heritage and folkways into America's eastern mountains, which were settled by Britain's highlanders.
Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff
Sharyn McCrumb is comfort reading for me. I'm supposed to be on vacation right now. I'm supposed to be hundreds of miles away with my 💕 .... but flight and scheduling issues made that not happen so I've been in a bit of a funk. I tried book after book and none of them were sticking, and then I remembered by pledge to read the entire Ballad series this year .... and that my favorite character would be introduced in the next book on my list .... so The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter it is.
Okay, so perhaps it might be odd that my "comfort reading" starts with an apparent mass-murder/suicide and includes a toxic cancer-causing river, ghosts, and a pregnant minister's wife left to deal with everything while her husband is stationed in the Middle East .... but it also has Nora Bonesteel and she makes everything okay. Well, she at least makes everything a bit less awful. She doesn't appear often in this one, but just enough to make her presence known and meaningful.
She's part Cherokee, part Scottish, and completely Appalachian. If she wasn't a fictional character I would be scouring my family tree to try and find a link. [That actually does happen down the line .... but we'll get to that in April.] She has The Sight and whether it's a blessing or a curse really depends on the day and what it is she's seeing and who she's seeing it about. It isn't really something that can be controlled. She does, though, tend to know about tragedy before it happens -- the wedding gown she stopped working on before it as discovered that the groom wouldn't be returning from the battlefields; smelling devastating fires days in advance; funeral cakes baked before accidents were even reported. Oh yeah, and she can speak to the dead and gets "lost" in time.
I'll be completely honest here. Since this was a reread and all I really cared about was Nora, I skimmed large parts of the book. I remembered the story well enough that I still knew what was happening, but I just needed Nora.... and Vernon..... and Spencer and LeDonne.... but mostly Nora.
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