New York Times best-selling author and author of the award-winning novel, St. Dale, Sharyn McCrumb will be speaking and signing books at Shakespeare and Co. bookstore on Friday, June 10, from 2 p.m. until 3:30 p.m., during Highland’s annual Motoring Festival.
McCrumb, a North Carolina native, is known for her Appalachian “ballad” novels that are set in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. She has won a myriad of awards including the 2006 Library of Virginia Award and the American Writing Awards’ Book of the Year Award for St. Dale.
St. Dale is a departure from McCrumb’s usual writing style, as it gives a modern-day, southern twist to the Chaucer classic, The Canterbury Tales. The novel, which centers around the late NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, follows a group of travelers as they embark on an Earnhardt memorial bus tour, with all of them searching for something to believe in and having their lives touched by Earnhardt in different ways.
“Although St. Dale may seem far removed from my previous works, the award-winning, Ballad novels, I see a common theme,” McCrumb said. “In my novels, I try to explain Southern traditions and combat unthinking stereotypes about the South. Stock car racing began in the Southern mountains, and there is no sport more maligned by cultural snobs than NASCAR. People are embarrassed if they don’t understand the nuances of modern art or opera, but they seem quite proud of their ignorance about stock car racing. I don’t understand the concept of being proud of one’s ignorance. I set out to learn about the sport, and I discovered that it is ‘ballet on wheels,’ and that I admired and respected the drivers.”
McCrumb’s love for storytelling started at an early age. She grew up surrounded by stories, whether it be literary classics or stories of a time long ago that were passed down from generation to generation.
“Storytelling was an art form that I learned early on,” McCrumb said. “When I was a little girl, my father would come in to tell me bedtime stories, which usually began with a phrase like, ‘once there was a prince named Paris, whose father was Priam, the king of Troy…’ Thus, I got the Iliad in nightly installments, geared to the level of a four-year old’s understanding. I grew up in a swirl of tales: the classics retold; ballads or country songs, each having a melody, but above all a plot; and my family stories about Civil War soldiers, train wrecks, and lost silver mines.”
McCrumb said her books are woven like quilts, using pieces of other works, such as legends and ballads.
“My books are like Appalachian quilts,” McCrumb said. “I take brightly colored scraps of legends, ballads, fragments of rural life, and local tragedy, and I piece them together into a complex whole that tells not only a good story, but also a deeper truth about the culture of the mountain south.”
For more information on the book signing, call Shakespeare and Company at 828-526-3777.
- By Kaylee Cook