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The Unquiet Grave A Novel Sharyn McCrumb Books

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The Unquiet Grave A Novel Sharyn McCrumb Books

5 stars for the meticulous historical research McCrumb undertook and for her attention to contextual nuance and details. I was leaning towards 4 stars until I finished the novel and came upon the Author's Note, which explained the basis of The Unquiet Grave as the folktale of the Greenbrier Ghost of West Virginia, a tale born of the real life story of Zona Heaster Shue.

Zona Heaster Shue was a young, beautiful farmers' daughter who married an equally handsome blacksmith, a man we would easily recognize today as a classic abuser (though at the time, in the late 19th century, the language to describe this behavior was not widely used or understood). Soon after her wedding, Zona's body was found, allegedly dead from a fall. However, suspicious circumstances in her husband's behavior and past (such as an abused ex-wife and another prior wife dead from a "fall") lead Mary Jane Heaster, Zona's mother, to believe that Trout Shue had killed his wife. Unable to think of another way to bring Shue to justice, Mary Jane recounted a story to the county prosecutor, John Alfred Preston, about her daughter's ghost returning to tell the tale of her murder; intrigued, Preston ordered an exhumation of Zona's body and found that, indeed, her neck had been wrung.

The novel alternates timelines between the late 19th century, mostly spoken in the voice of Zona's mother, Mary Jane, and the 1930s, which presents the story as remembered by a lawyer from Trout Shue's trial. The 19th century timeline vividly depicts West Virginia small-town/farm life in the era and brings the region fully to life while sketching realistic portraits of characters who might have populated the landscape of the times. This part, I loved (I've been on a rural-America binge for some months now, and McCrumb skilfully transports the reader to the region). The 1930s timeline also fascinated me, seeing as the location is a segregated asylum; one of Shue's lawyers, a black man, recounts his life and the trial to the resident psychiatrist.

Had The Unquiet Grave been pure fiction, I may have had some quibbles with the structure of the story, such as, for example, the integration of the 1930s timeline (why a psychiatrist would talk for hours on end about a patient's former vocation, without touching on his psyche/psychic condition, is a hard sell). Still, since McCrumb quite evidently spent years in archives and historical sites, speaking with experts, and even making a quite obscure (and original) connection to a similar case in England, imo she deserves a full rating for the precision of her research, as well as for the ways in which she brings the region to life.


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The Unquiet Grave A Novel Sharyn McCrumb Books Reviews

I like time-traveling with Sharyn McCrumb, and admire her efforts to reconstruct events from the past. There are memorable characters in this story -- especially the determined mother, Mary Jane, and her silly -- eventually tragic -- daughter. The details of the daily lives of the hardworking poor, will stay with me. The book is enriched by the author's notes at the end, and it emerges as a triumph of both research and imagination.
Sharyn McCrumb is an amazing researcher and story teller. It is important to me that she puts so much work and heart into each of her books. There are several popular authors that I no longer support when they hit the era of "phoning in" their new books. Sharyn is definitely NOT in that camp. I have read every book she ever wrote. I have always appreciated the depth of her characters and the reality of her stories. I loved reading about the history of these real people and what happened to them after the main events in the story, too. Sharyn also makes many appearances in support of her books. This tour, she had many pictures of the folks, their graves, homes, and work places. This book is a good read.
In the intertwined tales of Zona Hester, a young woman no better than she should be, and James Gardner, the black lawyer who defended her murderer, Ms. McCrumb is meticulous in her portrayal of place and time. In addition, she weaves a fascinating tale, all the more fascinating because it is true. These books might be considered more creative non-fiction than fiction, and as well done and interesting as they are (and they are both) I still miss her fictional characters Nora Bonesteel and Sheriff Arrowood.
3 Stars.

“The Unquiet Grave” by Sharyn McCrumb is a fictional tale based on one of the strangest murder trials in American History which took place in 1897 – and had to do with a folklore legend of the Greenbrier Ghost. The book was extremely well researched.

The book flips back and forth between two time frames. The first is Greenbrier, West Virginia and 1897, where young Zona Heaster marries a man nicknamed “Trout”, whom she hardly knows and suffers dire consequences. Her mother Mary Jane is a strong willed woman who will stop at nothing to get justice for her daughter. The second is Lakin, West Virginia and 1930, where an attorney named James Gardner finds himself in an insane asylum under the care of a doctor nicknamed “Boozer” who wants to help him and he must tell his story to prove his sanity in order to get out. As it turns out, Gardner’s story converges with Ms. Zona’s as he helped defend the man on trial for the murder of his young bride decades earlier.

Both of those stories are unique, interesting and they hold your attention. Further, Mary Jane’s character stood out and really made the story.
However, the back stories of the all of the peripheral characters contained a lot of extraneous details that were superfluous and unnecessary to the story itself and unfortunately made the novel drag quite a bit and almost made me give up on it. That being said, the author’s note added a lot to the novel as it was clear how much work the author put into the book. Had it not been for Mary Jane’s character, I would have given the book 2 Stars but she warranted another ½ star. In addition, it was the author’s note that made me raise the rating on the book there after from 2.5 to 3 Stars. This book was completely outside of my genre and while it is not a book I would normally read, I am glad that I stepped out of my comfort zone and tried something new.

This was a Traveling Sister Group Read for me and it included Brenda, Norma, Lindsay and Diane.

Published on Goodreads and Twitter on 10.10.17.
Sharyn McCrumbs Last several novels are not of the quality of her several ballad books and the ones that follow. They are still good reads, but not nearly as good as her earlier ones.
5 stars for the meticulous historical research McCrumb undertook and for her attention to contextual nuance and details. I was leaning towards 4 stars until I finished the novel and came upon the Author's Note, which explained the basis of The Unquiet Grave as the folktale of the Greenbrier Ghost of West Virginia, a tale born of the real life story of Zona Heaster Shue.

Zona Heaster Shue was a young, beautiful farmers' daughter who married an equally handsome blacksmith, a man we would easily recognize today as a classic abuser (though at the time, in the late 19th century, the language to describe this behavior was not widely used or understood). Soon after her wedding, Zona's body was found, allegedly dead from a fall. However, suspicious circumstances in her husband's behavior and past (such as an abused ex-wife and another prior wife dead from a "fall") lead Mary Jane Heaster, Zona's mother, to believe that Trout Shue had killed his wife. Unable to think of another way to bring Shue to justice, Mary Jane recounted a story to the county prosecutor, John Alfred Preston, about her daughter's ghost returning to tell the tale of her murder; intrigued, Preston ordered an exhumation of Zona's body and found that, indeed, her neck had been wrung.

The novel alternates timelines between the late 19th century, mostly spoken in the voice of Zona's mother, Mary Jane, and the 1930s, which presents the story as remembered by a lawyer from Trout Shue's trial. The 19th century timeline vividly depicts West Virginia small-town/farm life in the era and brings the region fully to life while sketching realistic portraits of characters who might have populated the landscape of the times. This part, I loved (I've been on a rural-America binge for some months now, and McCrumb skilfully transports the reader to the region). The 1930s timeline also fascinated me, seeing as the location is a segregated asylum; one of Shue's lawyers, a black man, recounts his life and the trial to the resident psychiatrist.

Had The Unquiet Grave been pure fiction, I may have had some quibbles with the structure of the story, such as, for example, the integration of the 1930s timeline (why a psychiatrist would talk for hours on end about a patient's former vocation, without touching on his psyche/psychic condition, is a hard sell). Still, since McCrumb quite evidently spent years in archives and historical sites, speaking with experts, and even making a quite obscure (and original) connection to a similar case in England, imo she deserves a full rating for the precision of her research, as well as for the ways in which she brings the region to life.