Slice of time among contemporary newspaper reporters just after prohibition covering a rural story in Virginia. It was an eye-opening account and the notes at the end of the story said that it was based on actual events and was true wherever proof could be found. I appretiated the colloquialism even though I cringed hearing it [via audiobook]. It was a good book - recommended. ( )

woman on trial for death of father, fodder for big city reporters manipulation of public opinion, Nora Bonesteel as girl

Sharyn McCrumb's 2010 novel “The Devil Amongst the Lawyers” is actually more about the devil amongst the newspaper reporters. It is based loosely on an actual murder case from the 1930s.

Reporters gather in little Wise, Va., less because the case is interesting than because the defendant, Erma Morton, is young and pretty. She is a schoolteacher accused of killing her drunken father. Because she is young and pretty, Erma expects the all-male jury to acquit her.

The trial itself occupies little of the novel. Mostly we read about three reporters and one photographer covering the trial.

Henry Jernigan is a big-name New York reporter known for his flowery prose. Yet Henry cannot focus his mind on the murder trial, for he is preoccupied with a tragedy he witnessed during his years of retreat in Japan.

Rose Hanlon, also from the big city, is considered a sob sister. Shade Baker, the photographer, works mostly outside the courtroom, getting pictures of principals entering or leaving, as well as shots of the surrounding countryside.

The fourth journalist, Carl Jennings, is a young man from the mountains still trying to make his name with a nearby newspaper.

The New York reporters sound like they could be working for the New York Times today, less interested in truth than in the story they want their readers to believe or the story their readers already believe. McCrumb stresses this point to excess, giving us line after line of Henry and Rose's cynical attitude toward truth"

"America expects things to be backward up here. So we're just showing people what they already know to be true."

"The truth is just what everybody believes."

"Truth is what you can convince people to believe."

"They wouldn't believe the truth if I told 'em, and they wouldn't like it if they did."

And so on.

Shade is directed to get pictures of hicks living in shacks, even though he finds it a challenge finding either. They are disappointed that most people in Wise seem pretty much like most people back East.

Only Carl attempts to tell the true story, yet he ultimately gets fired because his stories lack the color of the big-city reporters.

McCrumb flirts with the supernatural in her novel, yet she is the one who seems prophetic. ( )

All the descriptions of this book start out with something like this: "In 1936 a pretty young schoolteacher was put on trial for murdering her father in the hills of Virginia." This sounds like vintage McCrumb...taking an actual legal case, often one that became the stuff of legend and ballad, and turning it into a grand reading experience. Maybe her story fills in gaps in motivation, or offers a solution to an unsolved mystery. Surely it presents interesting, likeable or despicable characters for the reader to become invested in.

The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, however, is not from that mold. First of all, as McCrumb has pointed out herself, this is definitely not a crime novel. The trial barely features in the narrative at all. We never witness the crime itself until the final chapter, but from pretty early on I was quite sure I knew “what really happened” in the Morton kitchen the night Pollock Morton died and his daughter Erma ended up charged with murder. Several journalists arrive in Wise County to follow the trial, and it is their stories we eventually learn as they scope out ways to present a fairly dull tale to readers back home. Wise County is not the hillbilly heaven sophisticates in Knoxville and New York purportedly believe in and want to read about. Nobody is wearing poke bonnets or spitting tobacco in the street, and the houses look much like houses in small towns all over the country---no one-room shacks with sagging porches and packs of hound dogs bayng at strangers. So...no one will be the wiser if photos are staged and paid for, and the facts are embellished or slanted to fit the stereotypes. What else can be done, anyway, when the accused woman’s brother has made a deal with the Hearst newspaper syndicate giving their reporters exclusive access to Erma. One young local reporter on his first big assignment truly does want to tell it straight, but his efforts...and his career...are doomed. With one exception, the rest of the journalistic crowd are fairly uninteresting. Henry Jernigan, a man with a national reputation, refined tastes, a love for Japanese culture and a terror of fire, would have been subject matter for a book all by himself. I was much more curious about his back story as it unspooled than I was about any of the others, or the outcome of the trial.

In its favor, this book could easily stand alone---there is a piece of Nora Bonesteel's young life woven in, which I'm glad to know about, but which does not need any familiarity with her from the other novels to make sense. Possibly someone who did not already love McCrumb for the fine Appalachian characters and settings would see this book in a completely different light. There is a lot of good stuff in here about contrasting cultures; misunderstanding the other; the concept of truth---when it matters and when it doesn't; societal constraints and the primacy of appearances. What is lacking is a good story to wrap all that up in. It reads way too much like a treatise on these subjects at times, and I found it repetitive, even tedious in making points which were obvious right quick. I do see what the author was doing; I just felt she was a bit heavy-handed with it. ( )

This was not my favorite Ballad novel. Too much time was spent about the journalists and not enough about the crime. The last page was very cute! ( )