Resumo de She Walks These Hills

One of the earliest books in the Ballad series of novels by Sharyn McCrumb, She Walks These Hills, gives the reader a closer look at some the characters that populate the Ballad novels: Sheriff Spencer Arrowood, Deputy Joe LeDonne, and Nora Bonesteel.

Jeremy Cobb, a college professor, has become obsessed with Katie Wyler, an early settler in the hills of Tennessee with her family. Katie?s family was killed by a group of local Native Americans. Only her younger brother, Andrew, was able to escape to a neighboring farm. Katie was taken captive to Ohio territory. Somehow she was able to eventually escape and make her way back home to the Tennessee hills. On a school break, Jeremy decides to follow a portion of the path Katie would have taken on her trek to get back home. Jeremy has no hiking experience and soon finds that he loaded his backpack too full of unnecessary items, discards most along the trail, and physically becomes foot-sore, wracked with fever, diaryha and lost in the mountains.

Meanwhile, an elderly, ill man escapes from the local penitentiary and is headed to his home in the Tennessee Mountains. Harm Sorley was convicted of murdering his neighbor, and with a state appointed attorney, he was convicted of murder and received a sentence so long that Harm will never see the light of day. Never see his wife and daughter again. Harm believes God wants him to escape and go home, although he is now 63 and his wife has divorced him many years ago. Now after 20 some years, no one is very concerned about the escape of a sick old man.

Within the Hamlin sheriff?s office, the dispatcher, Martha, decides she would like to become a deputy, and the sheriff agrees to give her a trial position to see how she works out. Spencer is a little leary of doing this, as Martha and LeDonne are dating. LeDonne says he doesn?t care, but the reader soon finds out that it does bothers him when he goes out and picks up a waitress in a seedy bar and begins a casual, brief affair with her. Martha learns of his indiscretion and throws herself into her work. On her off hours, Martha focuses on finding Harm Sorley, even though not many other people care about it. Until, that is, Harm?s ex-wife is found dead and a baby from a local family goes missing.

Martha solves the mystery of Harm Sorley, and finds Harm himself. Jeremy learns what happened to Katie from a source which surprises him, Nora Bonesteel. This is a suspenseful, fast-paced novel and one of McCrumb's best.

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