Ballad of Laurel Springs

From the internationally bestselling author of The Atomic City Girls, a provocative novel set in eastern Tennessee that ';explores the legaciesof passion and violence, music and faiththat haunt one family across the generations' (Jillian Medoff, author of This Could Hurt).

Ten-year-old Grace is in search of a subject for her fifth-grade history project when she learns that her four times-great grandfather once stabbed his lover to death. His grisly act was memorialized in a murder ballad, her aunt tells her, so it must be true. But the lessons of that revelationto be careful of men and desireare not just Grace's to learn. Her family's tangled past is part of a dark legacy in which the lives of generations of women are affected by the violence immortalized in folk songs like ';Knoxville Girl' and ';Pretty Polly' reminding them always to know their placeor risk the wages of sin.

Janet Beard's stirring novel, informed by her love of these haunting ballads, vividly imagines these women, defined by the secrets they keep, the surprises they uncover, and the lurking sense of menace that follows them throughout their lives even as they try to make a safe place in the world for themselves. ';This inspired story of Appalachian folklore' (Publishers Weekly) will move and rouse you.