The Unquiet Grave
Sharyn McCrumb
Trade Paper $16
ebook $11.99

I’ve been a fan of Sharyn McCrumb ever since I read Bimbos of the Death Sun, a satirical mystery about a murder at a science fiction convention, back in graduate school. To put some context to how highly I regard her work, Ms. McCrumb is one of the few living authors whose books I still buy in hardcover when a new one comes out.  (Jack McDevitt and Larry Niven are two others.)

She’d been writing the Elizabeth MacPherson mystery series at the time and had just published the first of what would become known as the Ballad books.  That would be If Ever I Return, My Pretty Peggy-O.  It was a traditional mystery set in the Appalachians.  The next book in the series, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, wasn’t.  The book set the tone for what would become the Ballad series.  The next book, She Walks These Hills, knocked my socks off, and I’ve been reading the Ballad books ever since.

The Ballad series has evolved over time.  The first books had a recurring cast of characters, but later novels have moved away from those people and away from the mystery/crime format, although there is often some type of crime, usually a murder.  They’re best described, IMO, as a blend of historical fiction and Southern Gothic.  I’m not aware of anything quite like them, and they’ve won numerous awards.  Read a few, and you’ll see why.

Zona Heaster and her husband (and soon to be murderer) Trout Shue

There’s usually a strong historical component to the story, and The Unquiet Grave is no exception.  It concerns a young bride, Zona Heaster Shue, murdered by her husband Edward “Trout” Shue in West Virginia in the late 1890’s.  She supposedly died in a fall, but the young woman’s ghost appears to her mother and tells how her husband murdered her.  The mother goes to the authorities; they exhume the body; the forensic evidence is just as the ghost described.  The husband is tried for murder, although the ghost doesn’t actually take the stand.  (Yes, the title of the post is a little misleading.)  The prosecution didn’t bring up the ghost, but the defense did in an attempt to discredit the mother.

The fascinating thing is that this is a true story.

Ms. McCrumb’s novel is fictionalized, of course, but the events it’s based on are a part of the historical record.  The murder took place in Greenbrier, West Virginia.  The photo on the left shows the historical marker.

Ms. McCrumb does an excellent job of telling the story from multiple viewpoints.  The book is highly researched, and the author’s afterward tells what happened, to the extent we know, to most of the major characters.  One of the things I found most fascinating about the book was what Ms. McCrumb suggested at the end about what she thinks might have happened.

The Unquiet Grave is a nice, seasonal read.  Highly recommended.