Prayers the Devil Answers

I am a diehard Sharyn McCrumb fan of her ballad series, and I remain so. This is a hard book for me to review as the author has stepped away from the traditional people in her ballad novels and taken more of a historical history turn away, in not only this novel but in several before this, from all the original characters we grew to know an love in the first five of the ballad series. Prayers the Devil Answers was a good story, but it tended to plod along at times. The year is 1936 and Ellie Robbins is suddenly a widow with no income and no way to support her boys in a small town. She convinces the powers that be to let her finish out her late husband's term as sheriff. Nothing really much happens in a small town like this, so she anticipates largely paperwork, which she knows she can handle as she used to help her husband sometimes. When an artist in the town throws his wife off a cliff before witnesses, she suddenly has a murderer on her hands. After the trial, the verdicts says he must be hanged in the town where the crime was committed so that means Ellie must be the executioner. During the time the prisoner is in her jail, Ellie learns a lot about the prisoner, about her late husband and about herself. This was a novel depicting one woman's tenacity and strength in the most harrowing of circumstances.