THE HANGMAN'S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER

Here, McCrumb turns serious as she explores death from many angles: the matter-of-factness of a backwoodswoman with the gift of Sight; the get-even attitude of two old friends, one dying from the willful contamination of the Little Dover River by the Titan Paper Company; the emotional trauma paralyzing a brother and sister (who were subjects of physical abuse and witnesses to a family bloodbath and suicide); and the despair of a three-year-old who loses his mother, and of a pregnant woman who loses her unborn child. The story unfolds through the vision of Nora Bonesteel, whose Sight sets her to sewing a funeral quilt with six graves on it, and the ministrations of Dark Hollow, Tennessee, preacher's wife Laura Bruce, who is trying to tend to her husband's flock while he's serving in the Gulf. Four of the tombstones are soon co-opted by the Underhills—mother/father/two sons—and while Sheriff Arrowood tries to understand why son Joshua killed his kin and himself, two old friends hold the paper company's CEO hostage for carcinogenic polluting (another grave), and a trailer fire (another tombstone) fills out the quilt, while Laura, grieving for her unborn child, completes the dying cycle. Compelling, in the manner of a folk tale, despite the rather limp prose.