Folksinger Lark McCourry is haunted by the memory of a song. As a child she heard it from her relatives in the North Carolina mountains, and she knows that the song has been in her family since 1759, when her ancestor, nine-year-old Malcolm MacQuarry, kidnapped from the Scottish island of Islay, learned it aboard an English ship. The song accompanied young Malcolm when he made his way to Morristown, New Jersey, where he apprenticed with an attorney, became a lawyer himself, and fought in the American Revolution. The song went with Malcolm in 1790, when he left his family and traveled the Wilderness Road to homestead in western North Carolina, where he remarried and raised a second family. The song, passed down through the generations, carries Malcolm's descendants through the settling of the frontier, the Civil War, the coming of the railroads, and into modern times, providing both solace in the present and a link to the past. Over the years, though, the memory of the old song has dimmed and Lark McCourry's only hope of preserving her family legacy lies in mountain wisewoman Nora Bonesteel, who talks to both the living and the dead. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Skipping back and forth in time from the 18th to the late 20th century, and drawing on her own family history, McCrumb tells two stories in her appealing new novel, one heading toward, the other returning to, the Appalachians. In the present-day sections, 83-year-old John Walker is slowly dying in the eastern Tennessee town where he has lived most of his life, while his estranged daughter, Linda Walker better known as the country singer Lark McCourry is trying to make it home before he dies. She is also trying to recollect an old song she heard once at a family gathering, a song she hopes will round out her forthcoming album. But heading home, Lark is downed in the mountains in a small plane and trapped inside it. Meanwhile, Malcolm McCourry, one of Lark's maternal ancestors, narrates the story of his life, from the day in 1751 when English seamen kidnapped him at the age of nine from the Scottish isle Islay to the close of his life in the mountains of western North Carolina. Always he carries with him a song he learned aboard ship, which is then passed down to his descendants, each one remembering it at a crucial moment. McCrumb, an award-winning crime and mystery writer, has mixed historic and contemporary plots with success in the past (notably in She Walks These Hills and other novels in her Ballad series; some characters from the Ballad series reappear here), and she does so again, letting the past inform the present and generating a good deal of suspense in a novel that is not properly a mystery. Readers may come to feel that Lark McCourry, unlike the tune-miners looking to stake a copyright claim to every mountain song they hear, is the real songcatcher, the rightful inheritor of her family's music. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

The statement on McCrumb's web site (www.sharynmccrumb.com) that her new book "will be Roots with a tune" is not quite accurate. While it is about many generations of a Southern family and a song that is passed down from one to the next, it is in no other way comparable to a masterpiece like Alex Haley's Roots. In alternating chapters, we read of the kidnapped Scottish boy who brings the song to America and his adventures on the frontier, countered with the travails of his modern-day folk singer descendant, whose plane crashes on her way back to her Appalachian home to track down the song. Interspersed with these are distantly relevant story lines involving a hiker trapped in the mountains and the ghost of another dead folk singer who visits with the living demanding sole proprietary rights to the song. McCrumb (The PMS Outlaws; The Ballad of Frankie Silver) based the story on her own family's history, but the sections that take place in contemporary times are more enjoyable than the interruptions from the past. Still, given McCrumb's popularity, most public libraries should consider. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/01.] Lisa Bier, Mashantucket Pequot Research Lib., CTCopyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information