Ghost Riders

I wrote this entry May 12, 2005:

What a frustrating book!  On the one hand, I liked the voices of the characters very much.  I could just about hear them speaking in my mind.  I truly enjoyed some of the characters very much but they didn't appear as often as I liked.

On the downside:  what was this story supposed to be about?  I was drawn to it because of the title and the summary I saw in the book club newsletter:  it's the Civil War and a young woman dresses up like a man and follows her husband off to war.  There were not-so-subtle hints about a ghost story, too.  Well...look at the title, Ghost Riders.  But ... I feel like I was misled!  Yes, young Malinda Blalock dressed up like a soldier and followed her husband to war ... that was about one chapter.  There were small chapters interspersed that told of the spirits of Civil War soldiers stirred up by the re-enactments going on around them.  There wasn't enough of that.

There was an awful lot about Zebulon Vance, an ambitious mountain boy who becomes a lawyer, then a politician, then a soldier, then the governor of North Carolina...so?  I kept waiting for him to have more encounters with the Blalocks but he never did.  Their paths crossed just once, back when Malinda disguised herself as "Sam".

What was the point of the book anyway?  Feuds don't die?  Be careful not to stir up the restless ghosts by dressing up in Civil War uniforms and shooting off weapons of the time?  I couldn't figure it out.

It's not a bad book because I think Sharyn McCrumb has a way with words and characterizations.  I wouldn't recommend it to anyone though. I wouldn't know what to tell them it's about!