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11th out of 219 books
—
377 voters
The Ballad of Frankie Silver (Ballad #5)
A career lawman will bear witness to the final judgement, as a man he put away twenty years ago is about to be executed for the brutal slaying of two hikers. However, his conscience is no longer clear to the point of absolute certainty about the man's guilt. Also of intense interest to the lawman is the parallel between the current events and a legendary murder and executi...more
Paperback, 416 pages
Published
May 1st 1999
by Signet
(first published 1997)
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This is certainly not an uplifting book but an excellently written one. The book alternates between two time periods - the 1800s and the present. Both deal with people who have been convicted of murder and are awaiting execution. In the earlier time period, it is Frankie Silver, an 18 year old woman who is convicted of killing her young husband but to some, something is amiss. In the present, another young man (Fate Harkryder) was convicted of murdering two hikers and now it is 20 years later an...more
Embarrassingly, the only reason why I picked this up is that it was narrated by the inimitable Barbara Rosenblat, my favourite audiobook narrator ever to open a book. I am so glad that I did. The Ballad of Frankie Silver is a sensitive, character-filled, meticulously researched exploration of an old death that inspired a famous Appalachian folk ballad: Francis "Frankie" Silver's murder of her no-good husband and her subsequent hanging as one of the first executed in women in North Carolina.
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This is an interesting plot linking execution of murderers 165 years apart. Frankie Silver is arrested, tried and found guilty of murdering her husband in 1832. Fate Harkryder has been on death row for 20 years for the murders of two hikers on the Appalachian Trail. Sheriff Spencer Arrowood has received notice that he must witness the execution of Harkryder, but he is haunted by the feeling that Fate is not guilty. His reinvestigation of this 20 year old case prompts him to also reinvestigate...more
Frankie Silver was a real mountain woman convicted and hanged for the murder of her teen-aged husband in 1823. The fact that she killed him and dismembered him and burned him in the fireplace makes the community rise up against the brutality and she is quickly convicted of the crime and sentenced to be the first woman to ever be hanged in the state.
As time goes on and more facts surface, the townspeople begin to conclude there was much more to the murder and sympathy develops for the quiet, doci...more
As time goes on and more facts surface, the townspeople begin to conclude there was much more to the murder and sympathy develops for the quiet, doci...more
Didn't really hold my attention. Weird subplot that I'm guessing was meant to parallel the main story, but didn't really. Odd details and foreshadowing that didn't lead anywhere and/or their resolutions were anti-climatic (for example, Burgess mentioned the death of his brother a few times and within the context, made it sound like the death would be an integral part of the story later on. . . of which it was certainly not. And such a big deal was made about keeping the newest murder news away f...more
Sep 25, 2010
Larry
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
crime-mystery-thriller
Frankie Silver was a real person,the first woman hanged in the state of North Carolina, on July 12, 1833. Hers was a tragic story - 18 years old when brought to trial for the murder of her husband, mother of an infant daughter.Convicted in a two-day trial, she was not allowed by law to testify in her own behalf. Her appeals denied by the state supreme court, a grass-roots effort in the community arose to secure a pardon ,but it was not to be. As she stood on the gallows, about to speak, her own...more
The endearing part of this book was Frankie Silver’s plight. She was a real person, convicted of murdering her husband, had a rather botched up court trial that no lawyer wanted to take on for fear of damaging their esteemed reputation and the people of Tennessee lawfully hung a woman.
This was an era when family name and association to those who hold court in high society was the prevailing nature. After all Frankie Silver was a mountain dwelling lass who had no such family name repute to her be...more
This was an era when family name and association to those who hold court in high society was the prevailing nature. After all Frankie Silver was a mountain dwelling lass who had no such family name repute to her be...more
Sharyn McCrumb has received several honors, and with good reason - The Ballad of Frankie Silver is proof. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Griffin did well in choosing to publish this. (ISBN 978-0-312-38887-4).
Frankie Silver was convicted of murder in North Carolina in 1833, and was 18.Even though people began to question if she was guilty, she had to suffer, and was hanged. Later on, a century later, another woman is convicted of murder. Spencer Arrowood is brought into the picture to find the s...more
Frankie Silver was convicted of murder in North Carolina in 1833, and was 18.Even though people began to question if she was guilty, she had to suffer, and was hanged. Later on, a century later, another woman is convicted of murder. Spencer Arrowood is brought into the picture to find the s...more
I never imagined that the story of two double murders and a woman who hacked her husband to death with an axe could be mind-numbingly boring, but Sharyn McCrumb was able to do it. I can't tell you how many pages of intertwining family trees I read through, willing my poor brain to keep them all in order, until I finally realized that they were going to have nothing, NOTHING to do with ANYTHING.
How many times could we be reminded about how small and young Frankie was? How many letters sent to th...more
How many times could we be reminded about how small and young Frankie was? How many letters sent to th...more
I enjoyed this half fiction and half non-fiction story of life in the North Carolina and Tennessee mountains. The story alternates between the 1830's and 1990's. Sheriff Spencer Arrowood is recuperating from a wound. While recuperating, Spencer contemplates his first murder case and the arrest and trial of Frankie Silver. The underlying theme is the blood oath among the mountain community that deters punishing the guilty individuals. Sometimes I found the Southern genealogy to be tedious and cum...more
This book juxtaposes a factual 150 year old murder case and execution with a fictional contemporary case. The author states that the book is basically about poor people as defendants and rich people as attorneys, but I think that really the book is about the death penalty and how frighteningly imperfect our jury system can be. It's about justice and mercy and a code of honor that says that family is the most important thing in the world and that family members must be protected, no matter what....more
Sharyn McCrumb does a masterful job of weaving together two stories – one from the past and one from the present – that mimic and parallel each other. The true story of Frankie Silver, a tragic figure condemned to hang and the imaginative story of Fate Hardkryder, also sentenced to die, ebb and flow throughout the novel. Crimes have been committed, and debts should be paid, but by whom? And just knowing the truth sometimes is not enough. This is more than a novel about two people whose lives wer...more
I cannot thank my friend Natalie enough for recommending this book to me! I love storytelling and folklore and the story of Frankie Silver would have been enough for me to enjoy this book. My family comes from the foothills of Appalachia, and recently my kids have returned there for college and I have felt inexplicably drawn to the area over and over as I travel to visit them. There is a mystery there in the hills that draws you in, and somehow McCrumb captures it. But McCrumb does more than jus...more
Really much better than I expected. I ran across this book some time ago, probably while we were vacationing in the western North Carolina mountains where this book takes place. For whatever reason it did not appeal to me at the time, but I am glad to have taken my friend's recommendation and picked it up at last. The author weaves together the stories of two young people convicted of murder and sentenced to death, though over 150 years apart. Apart from these circumstances, these two seem to ha...more
Do you know who Frankie Silver is? In 1833, Frankie Silver was the first woman to be hanged in North Carolina. She was convicted of killing her husband by chopping him up and hiding the parts. Luckily, the story doesn't go into too much detail about this. Since then, there have been many legends about Frankie, some of which are true. People think the song, Frankie and Johnnie" was written about her, but not so. There are quite a few books about Frankie Silver, but I think I like this one the bes...more
Looking for you Appalachian heritage? Well, it you grew up in North Carolina, you might find it here. If you grew up in Oak Hill, West Virginia, you may have to look to your own memories. We don't have any interesting old stories of hanging in the 1800s. McCrumb uses a modern day murder and execution to contrast with the murder, trial, and execution story from the 1800s. It is a good book, but not a great book. I enjoyed it and learned from it, but I would never have picked it up to read on my...more
There's a bit less going on in this book than there is in most of the Ballad series.
The general theme behind this book is miscarriages of justice - people accused and put to death for a crime they didn't commit but wouldn't confess who did. And considering the theme, it makes sense that there's only two examples/story threads instead of the normal 4 or 5 that are going on. Maybe there could have been more plot threads added by generalizing the connecting theme, but that might have trivialized gi...more
The general theme behind this book is miscarriages of justice - people accused and put to death for a crime they didn't commit but wouldn't confess who did. And considering the theme, it makes sense that there's only two examples/story threads instead of the normal 4 or 5 that are going on. Maybe there could have been more plot threads added by generalizing the connecting theme, but that might have trivialized gi...more
This was a second read on this. I'm enamored of all these mountain ballads and I like Sharyn McCrumb's characters. I really like her take on what happened to prompt the Silver murder and its aftermath. But she is sort of clumsy at segues between fiction and the researched material she includes. (It's worse in some of her other books.) People start relaying information in a way that no one actually talks, or include a bunch of information that clearly came from historical records but isn't releva...more
This book deals with a mystery 20 years old along with a mystery that is 170 years old. Surprisingly, the older case is the topic that gets the most coverage in the book.
It's a long book, but moves fairly quickly. It's interesting how the court system used to work and I think McCrumb does a good job of generating sympathy for Frankie Silver.
The book's ending felt kind of like an argument against capital punishment, but I liked it. While it probably won't cause any moratoriums on the system, I di...more
It's a long book, but moves fairly quickly. It's interesting how the court system used to work and I think McCrumb does a good job of generating sympathy for Frankie Silver.
The book's ending felt kind of like an argument against capital punishment, but I liked it. While it probably won't cause any moratoriums on the system, I di...more
I considered giving this three stars, since I would read this series again. I did like the characters and writing, and enjoyed the sense of place she gives to the novel's setting. Reminds me of the Spencer-Fleming Reverend Clair series in those regards. However, as far as this particular book went, I did not like how the pacing went from mostly in the present to mostly in the past. Thought it should have switched back and forth more evenly. Also didn't think the conclusion of either storyline w...more
This was a interesting book. It is about a murder that happened in the 1800s, a true story. As they are telling the story about the murder in the 1800's you are also learning about a currrent murder and the sheriff who is going to the execution of another crime that happen 20 years earlier. Very interesting learning about how the courts operated in the 1800's. Since we had just made a trip to Williamsburg and learned some about the court system while we were there I understood what was happening...more
This is the story of the first woman hanged for murder in Tennessee, in the early 1800’s. For current interest, the story of Frankie is made to parallel two 20th century murders, each of which involved Detective Arrowood’s work on solving the crimes. I didn’t like this as much as the other two I’ve read, partly because of the detailed accounts of Frankie’s hanging and the 20th century murderer’s electrocution.
The story of Frankie Silver's arrest and trial revealed the injustice of the justice system toward the poor. Comments on the inferior place of women were also interesting -- if frustrating to read! The novel, as opposed to She Walks These Hills, was mostly about the historical story rather than what was happening to the contemporary characters. The parallel between the two as, however, well portrayed.
I was impressed by Sharyn McCrumb's approach - a combination of past and present "justice". So well researched, and expertly written! She has a way of drawing the reader into the story - captivating!
One thought - How many other cases, similar to these two cases in the story, have occurred over the years? I'm reminded of the old saying, "history repeats itself".. so does "justice".
One thought - How many other cases, similar to these two cases in the story, have occurred over the years? I'm reminded of the old saying, "history repeats itself".. so does "justice".
A contemporary fictional murder case juxtaposed with a one-hundred and sixty five year old North Carolinian true frontier murder case. More emphasis was on the latter, which was the more interesting story. The historical Frankie Silver case provided hours of listening entertainment on my daily commute. The author's note at the end indicated her commitment to painstakingly researching and maintaining the accuracy of many of the revealed facts of this old and mostly forgotten tale of a young mount...more
I don't really know what to write. I even thought of giving this book one star. I just didn't 'get into it'. I had great expectations for the book and had heard about the author.
I thought the book would be more about modern day police procedures, etc. Instead it gave a great deal of time to a murder over 100 years ago. I don't know what I was thinking.
I thought the book would be more about modern day police procedures, etc. Instead it gave a great deal of time to a murder over 100 years ago. I don't know what I was thinking.
Sharyn McCrumb is a master story teller. Her fictionalized retelling of real events is mixed with a current story. She obviously has done massive research and brings rich descriptions and characters to life. This book does move somewhat slowly through the story of Frankie Silver, however. It gets a little bogged down. I would have like to hear more about the modern story. But, she is an excellent writer.
As much as I love Sharyn McCrumb's work, I could not finish this story. Now, I should probably preface this by saying that I have a really hard time with stories that have little hope. While I can appreciate the story that McCrumb wove around the tale of Frankie Silver, I just couldn't get past the hopelessness and helplessness of the story itself.
I love McCrumb as an author and have always been able to picture the faces and tone of her characters especially as I live in the same area. McCrumb is a superb storyteller that languidly draws the reader in until they are captivated by her tale. I had not read about Silvers before and I enjoyed learning about her and how she lived and died.
The author weaves two murder convictions together -- one current and one in 1833 when Franki Silver becomes N. Carolina's first woman to be hanged for murder. The story behind the second murder case held my interest enough to finish the book, but I must confess I skimmed some sections. It was "OK" but not one I would recommend.
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Sharyn McCrumb is an American writer whose books celebrate the history and folklore of Appalachia. Educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech, she has also taught Appalachian studies. She is married to David McCrumb, a corporate environmental director, and has two children, Laura and Spencer.
-Wikipedia
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Feb 16, 2010 11:49am