Ghost Riders

The New York Timesbestselling author of She Walks These Hillsand The Rosewood Casketreturns with another sweeping novel that juxtaposes the legends of the Civil War with the lives of the modern-day mountain folk immortalized in her award-winning books. In 1861 the Civil War reached the mountainous South-where the enemy was your neighbor, the victims were your friends, and the wrong army was whichever one you joined. When Malinda Blalock's husband, Keith, joined the army, she dressed as a boy and went with him. They spent the war close to home in the North Carolina mountains, acting as Union guerrilla fighters, raiding the farms of the Confederate sympathizers and making as much trouble as they could locally. As hard-riding, deadly outlaws, Keith and Malinda avenged Confederate raids on their kin and neighbors. McCrumb also brings into her story the larger-than-life narrative of the historical political figure Zebulon Vance, a self-made man and Confederate governor, who was from the mountains and fought for the interests of Appalachia within the hierarchy of the Confederacy. Linking the forces of historical unrest with the present-day stories of mountain wisefolk Rattler and Nora Bonesteel, McCrumb weaves two overlapping narratives. It is up to Nora Bonesteel and Rattler to calm the Civil War ghosts who are still wandering the mountains, and prevent a clash between the living and the dead.

Sharyn McCrumb is the author of many bestselling novels, including The Songcatcher, The Rosewood Casket, She Walks These Hills, and The Ballad of Frankie Silver, which was nominated for a SEBA award. She has received awards for Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature and Southern Writer of the Year. Her books have been named Notable Books of the Year by both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.