The Ballad of Tom Dooley
A Ballad Novel, Book 9
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Narrated by:
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Shannon McManus
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Eric G. Dove
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By:
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Sharyn McCrumb
About this listen
The Kingston Trio’s folk song “Tom Dooley” tells the story of the murder of Laura Foster, a simple country girl involved with returning Confederate soldier Tom Dula. But Tom was also engaged in a passionate affair with his childhood sweetheart, the beautiful - and married - Ann Melton. One May morning in 1866, Laura Foster stole her father’s horse and left home, telling a neighbor that she was eloping to Tennessee. Three months later, her body was found in a shallow grave only a few hundred yards from where she was last seen. The sensational elements in the case attracted national attention: a man and his married lover accused of murdering the other woman; the former governor of North Carolina, spearheading the defense; and a noble gesture from the condemned man on the eve of his execution, saving the woman he really loved.
With the help of Wilkes County historians and researchers, author Sharyn McCrumb visited the actual sites, studied the legal evidence, and concluded that the traditional story did not make sense. Consulting the maps, the trial transcripts, and the census records, she uncovered a missing piece of the story that will shock those who think they already know what happened.
What seemed at first to be a sordid tale of adultery and betrayal has been transformed by new discoveries into an Appalachian Wuthering Heights. The fictional retelling of the historical account became an astonishing revelation of the real motives and the real culprit in the murder of Laura Foster.
©2011 Sharyn McCrumb (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Sometimes Magic Isn't A Good Thing
- By Therese M. Woolley on 10-18-13
By: Robin Hobb
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The Known World
- By: Edward P. Jones
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor, William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful white man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation, as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart.
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A meandering audiobook...
- By Daniel on 09-03-04
By: Edward P. Jones
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Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
- By: Allan Gurganus
- Narrated by: Barbara McCulloh
- Length: 49 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and fans alike fell in love with the voice of 99-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the 20th century, when she was 15 and her husband was 50. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood.
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Dated.
- By edie butler on 04-06-21
By: Allan Gurganus
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Freedom Road
- By: Howard Fast
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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It was everywhere. You couldn’t talk about the revolution without using the word freedom in the same breath. But Gideon Jackson knew that freedom meant something different if your skin was black. Fast’s fictional account of the post Civil War era takes us into the life of Gideon Jackson, a black man, newly freed, and determined to make a difference.
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Great Story, Decent Narrator
- By Keon Gardner on 12-04-17
By: Howard Fast
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Hard Gold (I Witness)
- The Colorado Gold Rush of 1859: A Tale of the Old West
- By: Avi
- Narrated by: Alston Brown
- Length: 3 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Early Whitcomb's family needs a miracle. Their Iowa farm has been in the family for generations, but a long drought has withered their savings and left them in debt - and in danger of foreclosure. Early's uncle, Jesse, thinks he has the solution: to head West and dig for gold. Fueled by reports of prospectors striking it rich in the Rocky Mountains, Jesse can't think about anything but gold. Early is wild to go with him, as much for the adventure as for the gold. But the journey costs money - more than the boys can afford....
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great story
- By Uki Dominque Lucas on 04-09-19
By: Avi
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Across Five Aprils
- By: Irene Hunt
- Narrated by: Terry Bregy
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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This compelling classic of a boy's coming of age during the Civil War is based on stories the author's grandfather told her about his own life.
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Great History book for kids
- By Shannon on 04-02-12
By: Irene Hunt
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Mark Twain - The Complete Novels
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: Lee Howard
- Length: 58 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Here you will find the complete novels of Mark Twain: 1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Starts at Chapter 1, 2. The Prince and the Pauper Starts at Chapter 37, 3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Starts at Chapter 70, 4. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Starts at Chapter 113, 5. The American Claimant Starts at Chapter 158, 6. Tom Sawyer Abroad Starts at Chapter 184, 7. Pudd'nhead Wilson Starts at Chapter 197, 8. Tom Sawyer, Detective Starts at Chapter 219, 9. A Horse's Tale Starts at Chapter 230, 10. The Mysterious Stranger Starts at Chapter 245.
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Content; GREAT! Performance.. .not so much😁
- By brian deis on 01-09-20
By: Mark Twain
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The Moonflower Vine
- A Novel
- By: Jetta Carleton
- Narrated by: Natalie Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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On a farm in western Missouri, during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy’s fate will be the family’s greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive - and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.
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I didn't want it to end!!!
- By Amanda H. on 01-20-21
By: Jetta Carleton
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Ransom Canyon
- Ransom Canyon, Book 1
- By: Jodi Thomas
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Rancher Staten Kirkland, the last descendant of Ransom Canyon's founding father, is rugged and practical to the last. No one knows that when his troubling memories threaten to overwhelm him, he runs to lovely, reclusive Quinn O'Grady...or that she has her own secret that no one living knows. Young Lucas Reyes has his eye on the prize - college, and the chance to become something more than a ranch hand's son. But one night, one wrong decision will set his life on a course even he hadn't imagined.
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Random county
- By Kindle Customer on 12-09-19
By: Jodi Thomas
What listeners say about The Ballad of Tom Dooley
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Stacey
- 02-19-13
Sharyn McCrumb puts you in the locale
What did you love best about The Ballad of Tom Dooley?
What an interesting plot! There are mean people all over the place from every time period and this points it out!
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- Paige Barkley
- 11-05-12
The Story of My County
Would you consider the audio edition of The Ballad of Tom Dooley to be better than the print version?
I have a reading comprehension problem. I prefer to read aloud to another person or have a person and I go back and forth with reading aloud. It doesn't help that I never much cared for the story of Tom Dula and Laura Foster even though I live in the county this legend is from.
Who was your favorite character and why?
My favorite character is Pauline Foster. She is so magnificently nefarious. She has manipulated everyone and no one seems to notice. She has the simple wish to just watch Anne crash and burn.
Which scene was your favorite?
I don't have a favorite scene, but I do enjoy many of the lines of Pauline Foster. Her wickedness shines though everything. She has the power and has the ability to hide it and make the situations worse. She portrays this through her worst of lines. She knew what she was doing and didn't seem have any remorse to watch her kin fall flat.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Eva
- 06-09-24
Sharyn McCrumb
Loved the authentic country feel that Sharyn is so adept at building in her ballads.
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- Anonymous User
- 09-26-20
Incredible "possible" way events could've happened
I loved the fictional telling of the the unknown truth because no one really knows.
if you are from Western North Carolina and a folk of bluegrass music fan then you have heard Doc Watson do the Rodney Dillard song Tom Dooley. If you are a history buff you have read the sparce known facts of the actual case. The way this book brings back the times and struggles of my ancestors made the story that much more interesting. As a someone who can trace his family tree in the area to before 1800 in the Watauga community I recommend this to any true Hillbilly.
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- Kimberlee Smith
- 08-16-18
True Love
Absolutely love her stories. I have both read the written work and enjoyed the narrated unabridged version multiple times. This one is among my favorites.
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- Lea Chandler
- 04-11-16
Excellent ballad, interesting, captivating, albeit slightly depressing
I really enjoyed both of the narrators acting. They easily had me convinced that they were living in 1866 & were the characters whose voices they portrayed. My only complaint is, the story was slightly repetitive in some parts.I suppose that is in keeping with a true ballad. Which is why I Gave it 5 stars.The story was captivating & the female characters had all the charms of a modern day soap opera. I loved it. Kept my attention & even kept me guessing. I am becoming a big fan of McCrumb's novels & writings. Her attention to detail & history is excellent. Her characters are damaged yet fascinating to watch.
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2 people found this helpful
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- ljm
- 11-20-23
Repeated passages
The story was good…the writing was good…but someone really needed to pay attention. Passages were repeated several times in different places. The narrators were great and I loved the subject and plot. Too bad the pleasure was dampened by the carelessness.
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- Bradley M. Blair
- 09-23-17
Stranger Than Fiction
Being well acquainted with the author's tallent for storytelling and her habbit of meticulous historical research from her work on The Ballad of Frankie Silver, which I also reviewed, I went into this book expecting strong narrative, lots of period detail, and fleshed out characters. I wasn't disappointed in any of these expectations.
The novel is a first-person retelling of the events that ultimately led to the hanging of ex-Confederate army soldier Tom Doola, twice convicted of the murder of Laura Foster and hanged at Statesville, North Carolina on May 1, 1868. The story of that murder is told, with many changes to the facts, in the famous song ‘Tom Dooley'" recorded by The Kingston Trio in 1958. The story as told in the novel is based far more on the facts and posits Ann Melton as the killer, with Doola as the accomplice after the fact who helped dispose of the body. That alone would have been enough to hang him in any case.
The novel is told in two first-person voices, performed by two narrators. The main voice is the character of Paulene Foster, a syphelitic, and possibly also a sociopathic, young woman who was a cousin both to Ann Melton and Laura Foster, all three of whom having been erstwhile sexual partners of the accused. The protagonist, if that's the right word for her, is a cold, ruthless person with no regard for anything or anyone. I say she may be a sociopath, though, because at several points throughout the story, she communicates that she doesn't understand emotions and has to remind herself to simulate the socially expected emotions at various times. She also displays a seemingly total amorality concerning anything we might frame in terms of right or wrong Altogether she is a character we don't like and can't root for. She is, to the end, coldly calculating, and she walks off the last pages of the novel, and out of history too for all we know, very much the same.
The other narrative voice is that of Zebulon Vance, ex-Confederate governor of North Carolina, who served as Tom Doola's lead defense counsel and represented him pro bono. Vance is telling this story in retrospect. He is an experienced politician, and it is his advancement in politics that motivated his brief stints as a lawyer. The whole affair seems to be a brief, minor, and unfortunate legal case for him. Indeed, I'm not sure it wound up in his actual biography. It is his narrative voice that relates the events surrounding the actual hanging of Tom Doola, and it is his voice that ends the story. Doola hangs, Melton walks free, and Paulene Foster fades into the obscurity of history.
Overall, this story is very good, but it isn't as good as The Ballad of Frankie Silver. There are several reasons for this, in spite of similar narrative devices. Firstly, there is no one in this novel who remotely warrants our sympathy. Tom Doola, for example, may well have still been guilty of a hanging offense, if not the murder itself. And even if, as the story suggests, he was baptized and died with his spiritual affairs in order, one cannot help but regard his life as a waste and his execution as exactly what one would have expected. None of the Foster cousins, excepting the murder victim, are given any redeeming qualities that would make us like or at least sympathize with them. Finally, the character of Zebulon Vance comes across as not particularly invested. He's a man with a job to do and does it. All this leaves the reader wanting to like someone or to care about someone, and we can'!. cannot. All in all, I'm left with the feeling that the world is well rid of these trifling low-down scumbags. And that's not the feeling you want, usually anyhow. Still, it's undoubtedly a feeling brought about by the author's skill in depicting these people as they were, without exaggeration or softening of the facts of their characters for the sake of story. So while it's a little unusual to read a story with no heroes and where no one warrants our good feelings, this is such a story.
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The Performance & Story was Excellent!
The narrators had such genuine accents! We were immediately transformed into the 1860’s South.
Although this is a work of fiction, it is so plausible in the telling, that we easily believed that this telling of what is ultimately a true event in history, is accurate.
We couldn’t stop listening it was so entertaining!
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- Kate
- 12-23-17
Waste of 9 1\2 hours!
An overly long historical novel, with characters too exhaustingly described and totally unendearing. I would encourage subscribers not to waste their time nor credit on this book.
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