THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 7, 1996 TAG: 9607080188
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY PEGGY DEANS EARLE
LENGTH: 72 lines
THE ROSEWOOD CASKET
SHARYN MCCRUMB
Dutton. 303 pp. $23.95
In her latest novel, popular mystery writer Sharyn McCrumb returns to the foggy, ghost-tale laden hills of Tennessee. The book's title, The Rosewood Casket, taken from a traditional mountain song, refers to the coffin that a dying old man instructs his four sons to build for him.
Randall Stargill's sons are as different from each other as four brothers can be. Robert Lee sells cars in Cincinnati; Garrett is an Army helicopter pilot; Charles Martin is a successful country singer in Nashville. And Clayt - well, he stayed with his daddy in their little home town of Hamelin. There, Clayt portrays Daniel Boone in a ``living history'' program for the local school kids. A scholar of regional facts and folklore, he's also a passionate environmentalist who jealously treasures the land's natural beauty.
At the news of their father's devastating stroke, the four men, two wives, a girlfriend and her daughter are forced together in the ancestral home. As they face Randall's impending death, they must also face their past and the strained relationships they've always had. In addition, they must decide what to do with the Stargill property.
The future of family real estate is also a problem for the Stargills' neighbors. Dovey Stallard, who was once the object of the brothers' affection, and her father don't have the luxury of choice. They are about to be evicted, thanks to a nefarious developer who purchased their land in a foreclosure. He lurks hungrily nearby, seeing the failing Stallard farm as part of his scheme to make a small fortune in planned communities.
The Rosewood Casket is the fourth in McCrumb's ``Ballad'' series of mountain mysteries, which includes She Walks These Hills and The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter.
In the latest installment in the series, we get reacquainted with some colorful characters, such as the omniscient Nora Bonesteel. She's the tough elderly woman who lives alone on Ashe Mountain and is gifted (or cursed) with ``the sight.''
For Nora, the ``future is simply the past, entered through another door.'' The past, it seems, has been knocking on Nora's door in the form of a ghost child. Nora won't let her in. Who is, or was, this lost girl?
Sheriff Spencer Arrowood is back, too, and he must investigate the mysterious, grisly contents of a box that Nora insists be buried with Randall, her one-time beau. Sheriff Arrowood has another unhappy task: He must put the Stallards off their land, an act that sets off a nightmarish chain reaction in the lives of all who live in the close-knit community.
As in Hangman, McCrumb writes about another patchwork quilt - this one fashioned by Randall's sons' womenfolk from scraps of family clothes, to be used to line his rosewood coffin.
The Rosewood Casket makes for thoroughly entertaining, light reading. And while McCrumb fills her novel with countless subplots, she juggles them so gracefully it's possible to keep them all straight. Her words can have an effortless, lyrical lilt, much like those of an old mountain ballad, as in this description of Randall's decline:
``When the cold blasts of early March and his own infirmity drove him to his bed, he stayed there, curled up in a snowdrift of dingy sheets and sticky pillowcases, drowsing unmoored from his house and his life, but not yet gone.''
If The Rosewood Casket has a message, it's that while land is precious and worth protecting and preserving, it still must take second place to the love of family and friends.
The author clearly loves the spooky heritage of the southern hills, which she shares easily with her readers. As a bonus, McCrumb, who taught Appalachian studies at Virginia Tech, has appended a brief bibliography to her novel. In it she includes books on Appalachian history, nature and legend. MEMO: Peggy Deans Earle is a staff librarian. by CNB