A Word on Words; 3913; Sharyn Mccrumb

liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature ideas for more than three decades this is word on words don johnson and thought once again welcome toward own words my guest today is the award winning sommelier sherman crum are highly acclaimed appalachian ballad series includes the new york times bestsellers she walks these hills in a rosewood casket after they deride of shoes returned with her most beloved character nora won't see you and the devil amongst the lawyer she examines the stereotyping a reason to lose by national media greg engert have norah maquilas true that little girl gifted with what you call the cyclists on this book appeals to maybe for a number reasons but obviously you create

for journalists covering a murder trial and a couple more likeable a couple or a despicable result because they don't want to depict real people are where they are right and where the idea come from this murder case was it was a true story and it has its roots in fact non fiction it did it did that woman's ruling was edith maxwell she was of a pretty young schoolteacher who had a college education nineteen thirty five and she was accused of killing her father and because she was pretty and educated and because the national media was looking for a new way to sell newspapers now that the limburg trial had ended they fixed

on this pretty young teacher as their new cause celeb and everybody converged on wise county and the other thing that made it newsworthy was a metro of the lonesome pine which is sad and wise county was being founded that time in hollywood with henry fonda and fred macmurray and so the eyes of the nation are on life's journey anyway and they found this new fassett and decided to continue that hillbilly stereotype that you saw and joe on some time an animal his cell phone and a movie yes factor into your story very neatly and then of course joe moore the palace at making nine nature and so people really did where both wear bonnets and long dresses and writing the ideas about nineteen thirty five that had all changed but that's not what america wanted to you know that's not where they want you they want to do the people were selling in the past century cancer and an

asteroid victim on well i was fascinated by the way you still in a deuce down for a small murder itself raises a question about what really happened that night the evidence is circumstantial are not been in our witnesses testifying against this beautiful young girl her mom was there some happened the father died i had one gaffe and neighbors heard a clamor and eight minutes and hours before there was clearly an argument about something and then he's heard to say oh lordy lordy oh lordy and sanders as well it fell hit his head and

they thought it would go away i thought the most despicable character in the book for charlie her brother the brother lives and i mean you wrote him he's almost villainous you know i'd done it every time it ensured on a page i wanted away from harley comes with the intent under him for the money that the media will play the us to keep the story alive now when he once i was here she is dr are on trial for her life and we don't have money to pay lawyers and the only way you we as a poor family can get enough money to melt her defense is to get the money from the newspapers that would have been his justification so over here we have here we have three reforms let's talk about about these through reforms

won some influence it could've been in the banking business yes his father was brought to smile is so early on he gets sidetracked by journalism and he's more suited for these elitist he's arrogant or ios not when you're around to death he has been abroad and has been to japan and has had a horrendous emotional trauma were always there and that's sort of in the back it has minute you some lettuce get a peek at that as we go talk a little bit about why you put that japanese aspect into little mountains again was a couple reasons one is that my template for this book was a long poem from japan that was published in the seventeenth century matsuo basho write

a book you know what's a meaty which means they narrowed to a far problems he was a month in ego and he left his home one day and spent three years wandering in the mounds of honshu and writing a little travelogue in verse about what he had encountered in the mountains and i read that poem in translation and realize that quite a number of the verses that he rode it could apply equally well to our markets and that's why you have his quotation from ufos look follows really a nice chapter cry almost every job yes but think about the title narrowed tool for a province and when my reporters are sent down from new york to cover this trial they take the root that trying to abington they are taking in their raid so far prop cnn solar soulless metaphor there the

works for a foreign jargon jonathan is has been to japan he's the one who's had that horrendous experience he's the one is haunted by it yes he is a times despicable every sympathy in the world for the japanese culture and none at all for the people in the mountain culture of the united states and its eu saying him an entree a little bitty about that in the interview was done for a tabloid newspapers sum a tad better he's so i gave the newspaper touch of class gets it rice will flare and he depicts characters in a

way that has great appeal for mass ms mcgroarty ends of that time and maybe you still this time you know i'm a huge change but the murder mystery is still big news i'm rose on their land is the thought that figure she's in love with a pilot and he's in trouble back we shouldn't know until late in the book but then he has got himself into trouble trying to transform drug dealer from cuba the hour and then you've got a darker shade likeable decent fellow doesn't really like what how are hairy an iranian rose distort the image of the community he has a camera lens that tows an accurate story and i think that he saw committed to journalism in ways they are not

but if the depression leads the job survey doesn't do it by telling a day or if i don't have a job and his days with that and then there is a young continent local reporter for one of them newspapers in the region and then he comes in to compete with his followers and its foreign goes his attitude green the national press and keeps asking young jennings ought to know where is all this call or where is all of where is all this moral injury that i'm reading about now not been any of it from you you falling desperately says to say would you please take a picture of a funny and when schade says no or where this whole story so you take the murder mystery

and now what i'm terribly killed badly so to me it wasn't a mystery anymore than inherit the wind was inherit the wind you have a bunch of people with that their own agenda coming in using a small tennessee town for their own purposes and that's pretty much what i was doing with this pick your daddy to maine woods of the least interesting thing i wanted to see what the journalists did to assassinate the culture beyond the trial is almost irrelevant to the story that is options but you didn't give us our telegraphic courtroom saying in which the next door neighbor who all were and the noise violent than the raucous and console words investigate season there's a problem brought doesn't but in the un he becomes the wetness and the nearest

thing to a witness to convict guests on good men on the jury would you connected yes i think i were a person is she was charged she had grown up in that town that morales blameless alive but you have to look at things like the man died at two o'clock in the morning in the police were called and lonely in for example and there was an obstruction of justice going on that suggested that this was not an accident she was covering up something and i think given that obstruction and the very careful maneuvering that they were doing legally i didn't consider her interests and as you say in the book the witness the neighbor makes a very excellent reasons asian and he's clearly tell the truth utility story not throwing more money so he knocked on

the door and offered to help when he heard the cries from the father and they slammed the door and it's so it's so he tells that story end and i think that testimony was clear what resulted in the conviction now i talk about it when those judges broadly and ones that will fall it was he wants or convicted for me to go i don't think he realized that maybe when he first came down i think each i think he said the families in trouble and i need to raise this money to defend my sister and then all of a sudden he realized that she can be much more of a celebrity in jail than ticket if she were acquitted and then the money wouldn't stop because had to go on a lecture tour and raise funds for an appeal and she had become then for him a cottage industry exactly

it's a cottage industry that has some sympathy in knoxville or couple of do gooders are deciding to come up to the same the crime and investigate to make sure that she was treated fairly where they come from those two ladies from oxford to our radio that way women's clubs from all over the region flocked to defend the sport woman who was unjustly accused and they would get there and be told that they couldn't talk to her because her interview rights had been sold to the person to get and they would just sent packing for those who just tuning in i'm talking with sherman mccrum about her book the devil amongst the lawyers and the devil was amongst the lawyers did you know that you're going to tell us who did it at the un

i thought about that because as i said i didn't care who did it but i was focused on was the journalist but i thought that when people read the story they do want to know what happened and so that that was something i felt like i needed to put than the real woman in the case of maxwell was sent to prison and served seven years and was finally let out because eleanor roosevelt wrote a letter to the governor virginia tea party that won the fifth annual and very well in the book again there is a letter that is that's written less a harley one was alone of us even an old andrews sisters business well let's talk about your beloved little girl normal and steel she got the site yes she is a cousin to this young reporter from a local paper and he very smartly know she's got the site right now based on my father thought oh

really yes talk about the site to site is something that i think we must have brought with us when the scots in the eye were settled in the mountain and in talking to people i've discovered that quite a number of people in a nun's habit that originally talk about it just you know two to strangers but it's something that can run and families and i've seen enough people have it too to accept it well some people would say a vsp yes extrasensory perception others you know they're always people who are known as a major crime all come and immerse myself in the cultural environment than congo a sense and maybe i can give the police a lead warriors familiar works more like a radio at night when you might be

driving along and get two minutes of the program and then you can run out of the way you know the bright in syria i have thought about a century in the book and i can't believe in it i can't recall i ever saw any boy i thought ahead the site but of course i know and looking around you do and had at least one experience in which utah there was a person who saw you in a place where you never been crying and within twenty four hours you were in that place and just it's the way you said the book is dedicated to him yes and he was he was a phd folklore a professor at a university in west virginia so he wasn't even tell people we had the side he didn't have to do it had a complete career or you know as a respected academic but among his close friends people knew it so he was not one of these phony psychics that trust him to make a living more

or a reputation on it to want a cousin call called lenore and says please come please help me she found that she's not sure she's going to be able to see anything that what carl is hoping as i take it jerry rickett correctly from all cars hoping she is gonna be able to tell him when a mother or daughter and it now as a journalist i'm wondering you know what's is what's as they're going to call us a one when a call comes to his years you live you actually see it with it was a silly move on his part and she's only twelve thirteen years old she has she really can't do anything in and she tells them that is like trying to tune the radio at night that you might get something for thirty seconds but it doesn't make sense until later which is when everybody is mostly about the site they might get a flash of something but

not enough to do anybody any good though you really believe the site is reality vs but but not a terribly useful thing i mean you're not going to find out how he's going to win you know the duty game next week in identify that which stocks are going to go up or down he just like in a flash of it i might say getting a brown color so what and it doesn't mean anything they could amend something you know going into the jail where costs under yes take some magazines into the defendant has a way are getting closer and of course he's hoping against hope that the flesh is gonna be there and i'm it's not there on the other hand i was one of a flashing got was of henry i was a like a story i kept wondering why his sharon put her in this in this plot a main issues not gonna say anything

wise you wasting my time and then and then mr jernigan as aloof elite stopped snoddy journalist yes who has distorted everything she gets a very clear picture of the trauma that confronted him and in japan are and so that's why you put in there yes yes and that's another example of the site doesn't do what you wanted to do to get something in order yet know how do you write when you're right how do i write you write in the morning the afternoon evening the regimen is an updated analysis one book after another book at a notebook it's would you is a job was it can be here i

write about from the sleeve midnight until about four five o'clock in the morning from a night person and if you write in the dark then it to me anytime anyplace he wanted to be because look at your window and be contradicted and i write i suppose the stories in there interest me what i want when i get mad about something as easily when it when i write the stories that that unknowing me and this regional stereotyping was something that i'd run into so many times and i guess it started with remember that atlanta olympics where the bombing and to end them on some of the report are on the roof and baumohl my guinness and that there was a security guard there were changing all the time and mini internationally decided that they wanted to have done it any follow through very painful for some the mere fact that he was overweight and yet a southern

accent and not much education and that was a kid i thought that bill and should be and proceeding to where i would accept my son from the notion of the national group report on the remote regions rigid view but you're right some people don't and the fbi as i recall leaked information to journalists pointing the finger at richard you write so sure how much of real life and it's clear who rely on real life a great deal to them to create your fiction but how much to rely on what the authority at three stories in that book to show you the press having in a detrimental effect on the victim the first was the hanging of the elephant here and a inner went on to say my grandfather was mayor he known as the young gutsy overboard broadening through he was not sure he saw it but he was a baby but he does remember saying and then sometimes he wonders suggests is it just

the stories of hurt and just the pictures of st john right and my father was there as a baby when that happened my grandfather worked in the country or railroad yards so that was a family story but it was the newspapers that forced the circus to kill the elephant and then you had void tolerance story that haunts me it holds everyone knows about it and it was a movie you who kirk douglas maybe in the whole this is about the fort collins tragedy yes another him and the third was the maxwell story without turning their morton says three defendants affected by journalism it would've been so easy for you to deal with the emotional ordeal the mother went through flooded and chew goal that what i mean here is a guilty woman you know she's

guilty yes she knows are both say an aura she knows her son is exploiting the situation and allowing the boulders rare she well might have been acquitted they didn't think so i think they work with phrases on and on and i think i work for sod jamie oliver north were which it if you're really pretty he didn't do it well if you don't know mike go about wife syndrome you know and those issues and i don't live in nineteen thirty five you know that's really have their legs syndrome that's right well that's a very good chair that's really what you know about a couple minutes left over time this was by one and talk to you about your books what's

next at oregon one rip i'm about two thirds of the way through if one people have been asking me for decades to write about the case of tom dooley in north carolina and i didn't want to do famous hang down your head tom dooley his ruling was due out an act of research that case and discovered that everybody in the case had syphilis and that was just a sort of intrigue and i thought what you wrote about it at the college jerry springer call your office ha ha ha ha ha ha ah but then i kept researching it in rare was that it absolutely parallels wuthering heights and i thought i wonder if i can pull this off if i can read wuthering heights and senate north carolina making sixty seven and i think i came out for you sixty seven thousand words will bring your back with a side note there that would

it would be hard to get her and eighteen sixty seven well it would do if you could bring someone else in with assad them and are needed in this book i discussed it with what actually happened and i have and i've discovered that the people who wrote the nonfiction books about this case read him in the seventies when information was and is accessible as it is now i can send off to a military expert and get an answer in an hour or is it would've taken them three waits so i'm planning material about this case it never ever found fault and if you have worked as a novel yes their lives are going to be exciting time thank you so much it's great to have you here again to save face all of you and john singleton for word on words the breeding