Search - The Rosewood Casket (Ballad, Bk 4)

This was a great story, but due to my extreme sensitivity to frightening events, I can't read it again and am actually trying to forget the details that haunt me so. :>) Sharyn McCrumb is a favorite author of mine because she's a Southerner. Her people are in the Smokies, as are a lot of mine--"in them thar hills", as the expression goes. This book has a theme of a tragedy that occurred in the life of the man who has ordered, on his deathbed, his sons to build him a rosewood casket. The tragedy has been a secret all the old man's life up until now, when a lady with the Second Sight--also the man's first sweetheart--brings a rosewood box to the family home. And there the mystery begins unraveling, until the tragic, sad, and dramatic climax of the story. The thing that most haunts me is: it could have nigh well happened. Those of us who are Southerners know that "Southern Gothic" isn't just a moniker, it's our very lives (and skeleton-filled family closets!). Couldn't put it down, and I hope someone else will be touched by it--without accompanying nightmares such as I've had.

this one is better so far

I enjoyed this book immensely. The facts about Daniel Boone and mountain people in East TN were very interesting; it was also an excellent mystery.

Randall Stargill lies dying on his southern Appalachian farm, and his four sons have come home to build him a coffin from the cache of rosewood he has hoarded for the special purpose. Meanwhile, mountain wisewoman Nora Bonesteel, Randall's sweetheart of long ago, prepares another box for his burial - a small box containing human bones...

This book started out so good but about a third of the way through I started losing interest. I guess I was expecting something different than what the story was actually about. I found the parts about the mysterious child's bones and Nora Bonesteel (and her gift of "the sight") to be very interesting but they were only for maybe a page or two at the end of the chapters.

Randall Stargill lies dying and his four sons come home to build him a coffin from his precious cache of rosewood. Nora Bonesteel, Randall's sweetheart of long ago, bring a box to his family. She wants it buried with Randall. Its contents? a box of human bones.

Another good one by Sharyn McCrumb - set in the Appalachian mountains.