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Ballad Of Tom Dooley, The: A Ballad Novel (2011)

by Sharyn McCrumb(Favorite Author)

3.55 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1441867783 (ISBN13: 9781441867780)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Brilliance Audio

series

Ballad

review 1: 3.5 stars from me. This book is full of beautiful writing, but also has strangely redundant phrases and passages. The main character is a sociopath, so I spent most of the book wanting to see her get her comeuppance. Also, there were parts of the story that made no sense to me, but in the author's note at the back of the book, I realized that everything in the story is based on real events and testimony, which gave me a greater appreciation of the book overall.
review 2: I remember singing along with the Kingston Trio's ballad "Tom Dooley" as a teen, so I found it fascinating to read Sharon McCrumb's well-researched fictional account of this actual legend of Tom Dooley from Wilkes County, North Carolina. Her acknowledgements in the back of the novel were as fas... morecinating as the fictionalized story, explaining her research into the heart of the folk songs from the primary sources. This is a story about the mountain folks of the Appalachians and the effect the civil war had on them. As one of the characters said, the war was the idea of the rich folks but was paid for in the lives of poor folks. I really didn't like any of the characters much in the story, which normally would have made me dislike the book, but it was so well told, so well written, and so rich with psychological insights into characters and motivations that I find I won't soon forget it. The story revolves around the beautiful but shallow, self-centered, narcissistic Pauline Foster who married James Melton because he was a hardworking man with a skill who would take care of her without much effort on her part, but she keeps her lover Tom Dooley close by. Tom Dooley is a good-looking man without much ambition, who makes his own life easier by giving people what they want, as long as it didn't cost him anything. And then there is Laura Foster, a cousin who Tom is dallying with that causes Ann great jealously and heart-burning. Laura ends up dead and Tom and Ann are arrested for her murder. That's the ballad, the well-known account, but is it the full story?The narrator in the book is Pauline Foster, a poor, hardworking mountain girl who comes down the mountain to find a relative who will take her in while she gets treatment for the pox. She ends up with the family beauty, Ann, and her husband James, who agree to hire her to help out around the house and the farm, paid with a few pennies as well as board and keep. I should have identified with Pauline but as she continues the story she emerges as a cold-blooded sociopath who smiles and listens and makes friends so that she can gather information to use against people who have angered her or just to cause mischief to entertain herself. And unfortunately, Ann's attitude and treatment of her cousin has set Pauline to find a way to do her harm. She's like the spider at the center of a web, pulling this string and that string to make her desired outcome happen--and that's to cause Ann as much suffering as possible for her ill treatment of Pauline. Pauline seems a minor character in the historical records, but author Sharon McCrumb sees her as the catalyst for the tragedy. We get a bit more balanced viewpoint of the main players, the public ambiance, and the trial records from one other narrator, Zebulon Vance, who was appointed to be Tom Dooley's lawyer. Zebulon Vance is a hero to the mountain folks. Coming from the same humble beginnings, he got an education, married well, and rose to prominence as a congressman, governor, and lawyer. He said of his early years, "In those days, I lived up to the light I had, but it wouldn't have been bright enough to read by." This novel is a study of the personalities behind the facts of the Tom Dooley story. We know what happened but this book explains a more reasonable "why" than the legend that has circulated for many years. And along the way, Sharon McCrumb has unearthed a few more facts that never saw the light of day then. less

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