Thomas Dunne Books
July 2010
On Sale: June 22, 2010
Featuring: Nora Bonesteel; Erma Morton
336 pages ISBN: 0312558163 EAN: 9780312558161 Hardcover Add to Wish List
In 1935, when Erma Morton, a beautiful young woman with a
teaching degree, is charged with the murder of her father in
a remote Virginia mountain community, the case becomes a
cause célèbrefor the national
press.
Eager for a case to replace the Lindbergh
trial in the public’s imagination, the journalists descend
on the mountain county intent on infusing their stories with
quaint local color: horse-drawn buggies, rundown shacks,
children in threadbare clothes. They need tales of rural
poverty to give their Depression-era readers people whom
they can feel superior to. The untruth of these cultural
stereotypes did not deter the big-city reporters, but a
local journalist, Carl Jennings, fresh out of college and
covering his first major story, reports what he sees: an
ordinary town and a defendant who is probably guilty.
This journey to a distant time and place summons up
ghosts from the reporters’ pasts: Henry Jernigan’s
sojourn in Japan that ended in tragedy, Shade Baker’s
hardscrabble childhood on the Iowa prairie, and Rose
Hanelon’s brittle sophistication, a shield for her hopeless
love affair. While they spin their manufactured tales of
squalor, Carl tries to discover the truth in the Morton
trial with the help of his young cousin Nora, who has the
Sight. But who will believe a local cub reporter whose
stories contradict the nation’s star journalists? For
the reader, the novel resonates with the present: an
economic depression, a deadly flu epidemic, a world
contending with the rise of political fanatics, and a media
culture determined to turn news stories into soap operas for
the diversion of the masses.
A stunning return to
the lands, ballads, and characters upon which she
made her name, The Devil Amongst the
Lawyers is a testament to Sharyn McCrumb’s
lyrical and evocative writing
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