I’ve been pulling together playlists for hours for THE FABLED EARTH since the day I began to draft the book a few years ago. The contemporary timeline in this novel takes place during the 1950s. A second timeline flashes back to a summer in 1932. You can imagine the fun I’ve had with those tunes! The characters range in age and class, with some coming from wealthy northern families and others coming from rural Appalachia, and so the music ranged far and wide. I found it nearly impossible to narrow this list down to only a few songs and that’s what gave me the idea to ask some of the early readers for their thoughts. We each chose one favorite and I pulled this mini list together like a sort of group project. In these songs, we hope you’ll hear something of the haunted and heartbreaking story of Cleo Woodbine, imagine the crumbling grandeur of the old Carnegie summer mansions, delight in the folksy sounds of fiddle tunes and the storytelling of Irish crooners, and groove to the audacity of early Rock-n-Roll. And finally, I hope you love the final song, the one that I listened to most often while writing the book. It always brings me hope, just like I hope you enjoy every word and every note of the music for THE FABLED EARTH!
Salty South, Indigo Girls.
This song has long been a favorite of mine and it speaks to the themes and tone of the story with its setting on the wild, enduring coast of Cumberland Island with its long and complicated history. I love this version of the song with its string instruments.
A String of Pearls, The Glenn Miller Band.
What better song could we pick to bring to mind the 1930s and the grandeur of the Carnegie summer homes than this classic tune from the Glenn Miller Band? When you read the novel, you’ll understand how Joanna Burton’s precious family pearls play an important role in what happens that fateful summer and how they resurface in 1959.
Walkin’ After Midnight, Patsy Cline.
There are ghosts walking the quiet lanes of the fictional town of Revery in The Fabled Earth—you’ll have to decide which ones are literal and which ones are only stories. But young Audrey Howell, new in town and barely married before she is widowed, is very real and so is her grief. She hears something in this song that I think readers will understand while searching for her way.
That’s All Right, Elvis Presley.
The characters in each timeline are facing changing times but I especially loved bringing this to the page with Audrey Howell’s character and the record collection left to her after her young husband dies. These early Rock n Roll songs seem nostalgic today but they were breaking ground in Audrey’s day and the sounds are those of a young and rebellious spirit, the kind of spirit she’s finding within.
Safe & Sound, Taylor Swift, Joy Williams and John Paul White.
There’s a haunting quality to this song and the lyrics are poignant and applicable to the journeys of the three women in The Fabled Earth. There’s even mention of a fire!
Lorelei, The Pogues.
This song was one of the first to be added to my own original playlist for The Fabled Earth and part of the inspiration for the idea of a river siren from the first scenes I drafted. I love the Irish influence and the myth and I think of Joanna Burton every time I hear it!
You’re Not Alone, Allison Russell and Brandi Carlile.
From the very beginning, this is the song that I played on repeat while writing The Fabled Earth. This is the message at the heart of each storyline and what I hope that readers will take with them when they close the book. We are surround by wonder in the everyday. We are bound to one another by love. We are all part of a larger story. That’s the magic of reading and the spirit of fables and folktales that endure. We’re not alone.
I hope these songs bring The Fabled Earth alive for you just like the stories that keep Cleo Woodbine company. I like to imagine readers curled up reading the book and then joining the group to add their own favorite songs to this list!
Inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island, The Fabled Earth is a sweeping story of family lore and the power of finding your own voice as Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide with a changing world.
1932. Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year's party at Plum Orchard is a lively group: young men from some of America's finest families come to experience the area's hunting beside a local guide; a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week's end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined.
1959. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly thirty years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend - and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she's raised a ghost - someone who hasn't been seen since that fateful night in 1932.
As a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape and shifting tides reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along, two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect to illuminate the life-changing power of finding truth in a folktale.
Women's Fiction Historical | Women's Fiction [Harper Muse, On Sale: October 1, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781400234226 / eISBN: 9781400234257]
Kimberly Brock is the award-winning author
of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare and The
River Witch. She is the founder of Tinderbox
Writers Workshop and has served as a guest
lecturer for many regional and national
writing workshops including at the Pat
Conroy Literary Center.
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