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In the "old" days, people in the United States actually spent part of their leisure time "spinning yarns," telling stories true and exaggerated or fake and farfetched. It is hard to imagine, in this day of the computer, people passing anything down to each other without putting it on a hard drive first. However, in Sharyn McCrumb's wonderfully intricate THE SONGCATCHER, a young woman searches out her family legacy in a song that has been passed through the generations, which tells her more about where she came from than any legal document ever could. This is a yarn if there ever was one.
Lark McCourry is a contemporary girl with one foot firmly in the past. As a folksinger, she finds all music fascinating, but the song passed throughout her family ties is special. Brought to existence by one Malcolm McQuarry, an ancestor who moved to the States from Scotland in 1759, it was learned aboard an English ship and traveled with Malcolm all his life, from Morristown, New Jersey to Western North Carolina. The song gained new strength and purpose as the McCourry family suffered through the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the other great upheavals that shaped a nation...and a family history as well. Lark must turn to Nora Bonesteel, a friend of her father's, for information --- Nora has the ability to talk to both the dead and the living, and Lark needs to explore both realms in order to discover the real meaning of the song.
McCrumb is a writer compelled by an inner truth to look at life from all sides. Her characters are deep and enriched with truly human attributes (Lark's father will start to feel like a member of the family halfway into the story), and the whole thing reads like her own family history. You get the sense that the author has been here before, in this territory, living among these people, listening, watching. I felt like some secret had been spilled bravely by her, a tale of a family that had been rightly protected until her eager writer-self convinced them to let her tell their adventures to everyone. THE SONGCATCHER has that spectral quality.
THE SONGCATCHER is a wonderful book (and, by the way, was recently made into a wonderful film by Maggie Greenlaw and is available on video). Once you get the story of this song inside your own head, you will hear its music in your heart as well.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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