Bestselling North Carolina writer McCrumb (The Songcatcher, etc.) returns with another epic ballad of a novel, a multi-tiered Civil War story that links past and present with an otherworldly twist. Tough, resilient Malinda Blalock is dismayed when her husband, Keith, leaves their Appalachian mountain farmstead to join up with the Confederate Army in hopes of earning money. Not content to wait out the war at home, spitfire Malinda cuts her hair and enlists herself as "Sam," Keith's younger brother. Their tour of duty is cut short by a deliberate scheme to get themselves discharged, and they move on to become do-gooder outlaws, known throughout the Appalachians. This story is enmeshed with the elaborately reimagined life of historical figure Zebulon Baird Vance: his early success in law and party politics, his time in Congress, his stint as commander of North Carolina troops, and his election (and subsequent re-election) as governor of North Carolina during the Civil War. Running parallel to these story lines is a dilemma plaguing present-day, Civil War re-enactment actors camped out in the Appalachians. As they restage a violent piece of Southern history, ghosts of Civil War soldiers begin appearing at their campsites and also to area residents. It's up to locals Rattler and Nora Bonesteel, both possessing the gift of "sight," to quell the ghosts' hostilities. McCrumb writes high-spirited historical fiction, her lush, dense narratives shored up by thorough research and convincing period detail. Her latest is another harmonious, folksy blend of history and backwoods lore. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A sprawling, multilayered tale: Deep, deep under the surface of Union and Confederate ideology teem the Appalachian folk for whom "the wrong side was to take a side" in the War Between the States. Ever since Appomattox, a company of spectral soldiers has ridden the woods, inviting the few people who can see them to join their ranks. As an encampment of Civil War re-enactors gathers in the Tennessee hills and Wake County Sheriff Spencer Arrowood seeks information on the ancestor who was the very last casualty of the war, McCrumb, in the prismatic manner of her Ballad series (The Songcatcher, 2001, etc.), brings alive a time in which nearly every family had relatives fighting on both Union and Confederate sides and peoples it with figures drawn from history. When Keith Blalock, a Union sympathizer surrounded by secessionists, is drafted into the Confederate army, he's followed by his wife Malinda, who disguises herself as a boy to watch over him until he sneaks off to become a pilot for strangers fleeing north--and an avenging fugitive from his neighbors and the law. At the other end of the scale, not even the best-connected citizens feel masters of the war's political realities. Zebulon Vance, a Smokey Mountain Gatsby, rises to the state legislature and the US Congress before the war raises him to military command and then strands him in the North Carolina governor's mansion, where his ritual promises to do the best he can for myriad petitioners ring hollow even in his own ears. McCrumb counterpoints these stories of the personal side of war with the contemporary confusion of the re-enactors and the story of Tom Gentry, who's come to the mountains to die. Unlike McCrumb's Ballad tales, which dramatized the convergence of multiple generations, this patchwork daringly leaves each story suspended, linked only by the inconclusive verdicts of history and the rush of ghost riders bound for glory. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The prolific McCrumb's latest Appalachian ballad novel takes on the Civil War through the eyes of mountain dwellers past and present. Two of the narrators are actual historical figures, both Union sympathizers surrounded by Confederate neighbors: Zebulon Vance, a poor mountain boy who worked his way up to become governor of North Carolina during the turbulent war years, and Malinda Blaylock, a plucky young woman who followed her husband off to war by posing as a man and later joined him as an outlaw. Their stories are rich in detail and serve to illustrate the divisiveness and far-reaching consequences of the war, but the novel loses its power as it intersperses snapshots of present-day citizens and Civil War reenactors stirring up the spirits of soldiers long dead. The patchwork quilt storytelling that has served McCrumb so well in the past is less effective here, where the different threads of story never quite tie together. Civil War buffs or McCrumb devotees, however, may overlook the holes and enjoy the atmospheric historical sections. --Carrie Bissey Copyright 2003 Booklist

McCrumb parallels the story of Malinda and Keith Blalock, Union vigilantes who avenged Confederate raids on their home in the North Carolina mountains, and the contemporary Rattler and Nora Bonesteel, who must deal with the Civil War "ghost riders" who still haunt the mountains. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.