Prayers the Devil Answers
Rules matter, especially in magic, so the Dumb Supper ritual practiced by a Southern mountain community’s maidens to lure their future husbands has wide-ranging repercussions in Sharyn McCrumb’s latest novel. In 1936 Appalachia, Ellendor Robbins fights to keep her husband alive after a cold takes a nasty turn into pneumonia. When he succumbs, she convinces the town fathers to give her his job as sheriff so that she can support her two young sons. She proves remarkably good at her work, earning the respect of the men who work beside her as well as townspeople she serves. Ellie’s greatest challenge comes when a condemned killer must return to the scene of his crime to be hanged – and only the sheriff may perform the execution.
This novel sings in full-throated beauty of life essentials as it describes a world of steel-eyed spinsters who make a sheriff’s deputy feel not just ten years old again, but “with a frog in his pocket.” Its direct simplicity circles back to the beginning of the story as the inevitable conclusion falls into place without a false note. With deep and abiding understanding and a poetic hand, Sharyn McCrumb captures the folk ballad melancholy of the Tennessee hills and hollows.
