Bron G. (MizBookLady) - , reviewed on 11/30/2006 + 32 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 3

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.

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