A Sound Among the Trees by Susan Meissner

This is the story of Holly Oak, a house in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the generations of women who lived in the house between the Civil War and present day. A cannonball still stuck in the side of the house is a reminder that it survived the war, but it did so because the family had connections to both sides. Rumors say the house is haunted, that there are Yankee soldiers buried in the cellar, and that one of the women in the family was a spy for the North.

Beginning in this way, with Adelaide, the great-granddaughter of the supposed spy, hosting a wedding reception in her garden, I had high hopes for the book. Adelaide's daughter and her husband Carson had lived in the house. Their two children were born there. Then the wife died and Carson and his kids had stayed at Holly Oak, believing the children shouldn't be moved from the only home they had ever known. Now Carson has married a young woman from Texas and they too will live at Holly Oak.

The bride, Marielle, has had a successful career and is presumably an intelligent woman. But this is where the story begins to fall apart for me because Marielle suddenly turns into a timid, frightened, gullible child/woman.

Holly Oak is full of secrets and rumors that no one has bothered to investigate and set to rest. It's like a soap opera where everyone keeps secrets which cause all kinds of problems. I kept thinking, "What's the big deal? Why don't these characters just come out with it?" This could be such a good story but I'm sorry, it just didn't work for me. Nor was there any sense of place and motivation was lacking for the characters' actions.

This is just my opinion of course and you might love the book. It is coming out Monday, Oct. 3, 2011. If you like family sagas and historical fiction, this may well be the book for you.

Sharyn McCrumb's Appalachia

I recently bought this little book from Amazon.com. It's a collection of essays about how McCrumb became a storyteller, her family background, the Celts who settled in Appalachia, and her thoughts on writing historical fiction.

I've been a Facebook fan of McCrumb's for a long time and had felt I was really getting to know her that way, but this book told me so much more. Now I feel like I know why she writes the kind of stories she writes; she comes by it naturally since it's a long family tradition. They told stories through songs frequently, and she still uses music to set her mood as she writes. In fact, she does a CD of appropriate music for the setting and the characters and the story before she begins to write. I find this fascinating.

McCrumb takes offense, and rightfully so, that her books are often shelved with mysteries. She doesn't write mysteries, she writes historical fiction that sometimes involves magical realism. Don't know what that is? She explains it beautifully in one of these essays.

Her books, especially the "Ballad" novels, are always best sellers. Now you can read this 65 page book and learn why they are so good and so readable and so much fun to read.