For generations of women in a Tennessee family, the tune of an Appalachian "murder ballad" resonate as a warning. Enriched with more than a century of Southern Appalachian history, The Ballad of Laurel Springs by Janet Beard (The Atomic City Girls) opens in 2019 as 10-year-old Grace, researching a genealogy assignment, learns that her four-times great-grandfather "flipped out and stabbed" a girl. Beard then follows eight of Grace's foremothers, including Polly, immortalized in the ballad "Pretty Polly." According to legend, in 1891 she joined her fiancé on a horse ("before we get married some pleasure to see") and was led to a grisly death. In the ensuing first-person narratives, trouble finds Grace's ancestors, directly or tangentially, as their region sees timber companies lay bare the hillsides, followed by farms sacrificed to the creation of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and the adjacent "garish amusement parks."
Isolated mountain culture nurtures old-time legends. But, over the decades, racism and homophobia, and eventually suspicious "hippies" and drug use taint the small town of Grace's family. Beard pairs a respect for the Tennessee women and their preservation of the haunting music with a poignant sorrow for their struggles. Fans of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and Serena will feel sympathy for the woman in this heartfelt story with deep roots in American folklore. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.