The Devil Amongst the Lawyers: A Ballad Novel
In 1935, when Erma Morton, a beautiful young woman with a teaching degree, is charged with the murder of her father in a remote Virginia mountain community, the case becomes a cause célèbre for the national press.
Eager for a case to replace the Lindbergh trial in the public’s imagination, the journalists descend on the mountain county intent on infusing their stories with quaint local color: horse-drawn buggies, rundown shacks, children in threadbare clothes. They need tales of rural poverty to give their Depression-era readers people whom they can feel superior to. The untruth of these cultural stereotypes did not deter the big-city reporters, but a local journalist, Carl Jennings, fresh out of college and covering his first major story, reports what he sees: an ordinary town and a defendant who is probably guilty.
This journey to a distant time and place summons up ghosts from the reporters’ pasts: Henry Jernigan’s sojourn in Japan that ended in tragedy, Shade Baker’s hardscrabble childhood on the Iowa prairie, and Rose Hanelon’s brittle sophistication, a shield for her hopeless love affair. While they spin their manufactured tales of squalor, Carl tries to discover the truth in the Morton trial with the help of his young cousin Nora, who has the Sight. But who will believe a local cub reporter whose stories contradict the nation’s star journalists? For the reader, the novel resonates with the present: an economic depression, a deadly flu epidemic, a world contending with the rise of political fanatics, and a media culture determined to turn news stories into soap operas for the diversion of the masses.
A stunning return to the lands, ballads, and characters upon which she made her name, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers is a testament to Sharyn McCrumb’s lyrical and evocative writing.
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(out of 41 reviews)
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Review by Kristi for The Devil Amongst the Lawyers: A Ballad Novel
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I was so very excited to open this book — the first new story in the Ballad series in ever so long. However, from the start, it is clear that this is not your usual Sharyn McCrumb novel. She has taken a true story, a murder in the Appalachian hill country of the Ballad novels, set in 1935. But rather than deal with the story, the why’s and wherefore’s, and, most of all, the marvelous cast that McCrumb usually brings to these stories, the story is told from the perspective of the reporters sent to cover the trial. On the one hand, three New York reporters and their photographer, do their best to ignore every detail that doesn’t match their preconceived notion of how the back country ought to be, even to the extent of manufacturing scenes of waifs in shacks for their own convenience. On the other hand, an earnest young reporter from nearby Tennessee is on hand, actually trying to see the truth of the story, but it isn’t pretty or appealing in any way and his reports aren’t doing his fledgling career any good at all.
Nora Bonesteel, the protagonist of many of the Ballad novels, makes a rather brief appearance as a 12 year old girl, and then in the epilogue as an elderly woman remembering the events for a young law researcher. Frankly, the epilogue was my favorite chapter of the book. It *felt* right — it was compelling and it went somewhere. The majority of the book felt like a real chore, and I have to think that it was for the writer. I think McCrumb set out to tell a particular story in a particular way and kept on even when it didn’t work for her. I’m ever so sorry about that.
Scenes from the sojourn in Japan of one of the New York reporters are interesting but lend nothing to the main story, really. Again, it is like McCrumb became interested with a particular vignette out of history and was determined to get it into this book, whether it fit or not. Actually, I think it might have worked better if the Japanese sideline had been the main tale, although it comprises at least a third of the book and so it almost is.
Here’s hoping the next one is back on track for everyone, as I don’t imagine this any more fun to write than it was to read. Darn it.
Review by Dr Cathy Goodwin for The Devil Amongst the Lawyers: A Ballad Novel
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If you are new to McCrumb or the Ballad novels, I wouldn’t start with this book. Part of the fun is reading about 12-year old Nora Bonesteel, who’s been featured as a steely-eyed intimidating elder in earlier novels.
At first I missed the format McCrumb has used earlier with so much success. I love her novels when she goes back and forth between time periods, tracing seeds of current conflict back to much earlier times. I didn’t find the journalists especially appealing. And in some ways the novel shares themes with McCrumb’s earlier novel about Frankie Silver.
But McCrumb’s ballad novels deserve to be read deeply, more than once. As with novels like Rosewood Casket, McCrumb introduces a cast of characters, awkwardly thrown together, each with his or her own story. In this case a horde of “big city” newspaper reporters have come to write about a beautiful young woman who’s accused of murdering her father. The young woman’s brother has arranged representation and has sold the story to raise money for hiring good lawyers…or so he claims.
On the one hand, the story focuses on the reporters who struggle to cover the story in a way that will please their readers and editors. If that means creating a drama and even faking some scenes, so be it. The idea is to picture justice in the backwoods of America, to create a contrast, even if the backwoods no longer exists (and maybe never did). Only Nora’s cousin Carl refuses to play along because he’s from the country himself. Some of the novel’s best bits of writing come when Carl reads between the lines of the country men he encounters, reminiscent of the delicious social commentary sprinkling the McPherson series.
Front and center, the storyline considers Erma Morton, attractive and better educated than most of her female contemporaries. We visit her prison cell and as the book unfolds, we understand what really happened that night in her home. Unlike Frankie Silver, Erma is educated and a little sardonic about her situation. She understands her role: she’s a pawn for the news media. It’s not really about her at all, she realizes, and we readers wonder how many famous and not-so-famous defendants have shared her thought.
That’s the third theme, unfolding with different degrees of subtlety through the novel. Justice sometimes gets skewed to serve public and private economic interests. McCrumb hints at a large theme whe she introduces the story of Mary the elephant who was hanged for no rational reason. Anyone who’s cynical about justice, even today, might question how many convictions are upheld for reasons that do not benefit the greater society. We could even draw a parallel with the Amanda Knox case, but I leave that to readers to ponder after they’ve read and digested this book.
Throughout the novel McCrumb introduces pieces of history, such as a cameo appearance by the Carter family. They slow down the action but I suspect readers won’t mind.
My own Ballad favorite so far is Rosewood Casket. Devil Amongst the Lawyers has equally strong writing and plot. While I was glad to see a new volume in the series, I hope McCrumb will set her next Ballad closer to the present and I hope she doesn’t wait so long. Unlike Nora Bonesteel, I can’t predict whether I’ll be around to see the last of the series and I’d hate to miss even one.
Review by Carol Roberts for The Devil Amongst the Lawyers: A Ballad Novel
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This book was a puzzlement to me. From the title I expected to hear a lot about the lawyers in a case of murder in the Appalachian region of southern Virginia. Instead, I heard a lot about the big city reporters who came to cover it. The defendant was a pretty young woman who came home from college in the mid-1930′s to teach school in her home town and was accused of killing her father.
It was the early days of mass media, and suddenly the whole country was getting every detail of such small-town dramas as was about to unwind here. A pretty, educated girl was about to be railroaded by her backwoods neighbors who resented her improving herself. The fact that this was a wild exaggeration was no deterrent. The public wanted to believe in hillbilly justice, and the big city reporters were going to give them what they wanted.
This was the gist of the story I found here. Earlier McCrumb ballad novels told about the people of southern Virginia and northeastern Tennessee. This time she told of those who would stereotype them and throw truth to the wind to satisfy their readers. She included one reporter from a nearby Tennessee newspaper, plus Nora Bonesteel, a fixture in her novels as one who has the Sight and has glimpses of the future. At this time she is 14. These two know the truth and try to tell it, to no avail.
Another puzzlement is the introduction of the Japanese influence on one of the New York reporters who came to cover the story. It seemed to have no tie to the events taking place except to make his character more complex. He was an erudite snob who felt his readers should work to understand him instead of the other way around. His sometime companion was what was being called a sob sister, a woman who was far from pretty and expected little from those around her. The photographer who accompanied them went out of his way to find barefoot children and entice them to wear their grandparents’ clothes for his pictures. Not an attractive threesome.
I felt that McCrumb was getting even with the intruders who had all too often sought the differences in the mountain people rather than the similarities to their fellow countrymen. However, I found the tale less than compelling. In the early part of the book I had some difficulty staying awake. All in all, if the book is approached with no expectations, it is interesting, and she does tell us at the end what happened to everyone with the advent of World War II and with it a whole new world.
Review by Susan K. Schoonover for The Devil Amongst the Lawyers: A Ballad Novel
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I am a fan of Sharyn McCrumb’s ballad novels which connect a legend or incident from Appalachia’s past with a contemporary tragedy. A new Appalachian Ballad novel has not appeared for several years and I was afraid McCrumb had abandoned the series in favor of her NASCAR themed mysteries which I admit do not appeal to me and I have never read. So I was thrilled to receive an advance reader’s copy of her new Ballad book THE DEVIL AMONGST THE LAWYERS. This new volume is a worthy addition to its predecessors even if McCrumb is a bit heavy handed in pounding a theme of journalists manipulating the truth to get a good story.
This new book is set in 1935 and based on the real life murder trial of a pretty young Appalachian teacher who was accused of killing her coal miner father. Names and a few elements have been changed but apparently McCrumb stays fairly close to the facts of the case which became a sensational national news story during the Depression years. The narrative is told partly through the eyes of four big city journalists who come to rural Virginia to cover the story and are bent on spinning what they write to conform to preconceived notions the rest of the nation has about “hillbillies” who follow the “code of the hills”. Carl, a native of the area and a young writer covering the story for a local paper is another major character. The accused and imprisoned Erma is also is the focus of several passages from her viewpoint. And Ballad series favorite, psychic Nora Bonesteel appears as a twelve year old girl.
Nora and some other hill folks have the “sight” which allows them to sometimes see the future as well as occasionally giving them the ability to communicate with the dead. This supernatural gift is one of my favorite aspects of the Ballad series and is well used in this outing. Less well used is the back stories of some of the big city journalists one (Henry Jernigan) of whom experienced life changing tragedy while living in Japan which literally haunts him for the rest of his life. McCrumb diligently tries to make connections between the Japanese experience and the main storyline but her efforts seem forced and for the most part fail. McCrumb is also far from subtle in her theme of the damage done to Appalachian people because of stereotyping from the rest of the world. Still this is a well crafted novel that just falls short of five stars.
Review by Cathy G. Cole for The Devil Amongst the Lawyers: A Ballad Novel
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Although I am a firm believer in the author’s right to publish what they wish, I do want to be on record as saying that seven years is entirely too long to wait for a new Ballad novel. McCrumb’s lyrical novels are love stories about the people and the places of Appalachia, and I have been enlightened and entertained with each one.
This eighth Ballad novel is based upon the 1935 trial of a young schoolteacher accused of murdering her father. The trial became a sensation, and newspapers all over the country latched onto it to boost sales.
As The Devil Amongst the Lawyers begins, the murder of crows is already winging its way to a small county in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The chief crows in this case are newspaper reporters Henry Jernigan, Rose Hanelon, Luster Swann, and photographer Shade Baker. None of them have been to Appalachia before, but (with the logical exception of Shade) all of them have finished writing their first articles to be sent back to their respective newspapers. You see, you don’t have to be in a place to know what it’s like.
On a separate train is a young reporter from Johnson City, Tennessee: Carl Jennings. Jennings proceeds to investigate, to talk to people, and to send back truthful reports to his newspaper. As the days progress, Jennings is in hot water. His truthful reports have no resemblance whatsoever to the articles sent in by the New York City journalists, and his bosses wonder if he’s really on location. In desperation, he asks the parents of his thirteen-year-old cousin, Nora Bonesteel, if Nora can come to help their cousin who’s busy running a boarding house in town. Jennings is hoping that Nora’s gift of the Sight will give him the edge in the journalistic competition.
If you’ve read previous Ballad novels and open this book with a set of preconceived expectations, you may very well be disappointed. Although it is wonderful to see Nora Bonesteel as a teenager, she has very little to do with the action. The mystery itself, even though it is interesting, doesn’t have much meat on its bones.
The major impetus of this book is its cautionary tale about journalism and its power to distort and mislead. (Not that anything like this would ever happen today. Heavens, no!) All the New York-based characters of the Fourth Estate did not go to their destination with open minds. They all had preconceived ideas of what Appalachia was really like, and even though they could see they were wrong upon arrival, they all knew the truth would not sell papers. As Rose Hanelon frequently said by way of excusing her and her companions’ shoddy journalism, it really didn’t matter what they said because two days later all the papers would be at the bottoms of bird cages.
Few writers have McCrumb’s sheer talent with language and dialogue to immerse readers into a particular place and time. Throughout this book, I felt as though I were walking the streets of a small town in the Appalachia of 1935. I was listening to the condescending voices of the New York City reporters, and watching the guarded, distrustful looks of the townspeople.
As the trial gains notoriety , it becomes less and less a matter of a young woman’s innocence or guilt, and more and more a matter of what everyone else can gain at her expense. It is a strong, compelling tale with fascinating characters and a wonderful sense of place. It’s not the typical Ballad novel that McCrumb’s fans have come to love and expect, but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying every page.
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