Hard Times in Madison County

When I was a boy living in Boonville, North Carolina, my mom once told me that the town tended to vote Democrat, but that many in the countryside were Republicans. The Civil War had caused that divide, with the more prosperous townspeople supporting the South and the poorer country people unwilling to fight for slavery and what they regarded as a “rich man’s war.”

In the opening chapter of Vicki Lane’s And The Crows Took Their Eyes, we hear these same sentiments expressed by Simeon Ramsey, a drover of hogs in the Smoky Mountains. When a peddler asks Simeon “And are you an Abolitionist as well?” he replies, “Like I told you, I got no slaves nor do I want none. This whole slavery fuss ain’t nothing to do with me.”

Yet Simeon and the other characters of this fine novel, those who support succession and those          who favor sticking with Abraham Lincoln and the Union, soon find themselves swept up in a horrible   war that leaves some of them dead and all of them changed forever. 

Based on real events and historical figures, And The Crows Took Their Eyes focuses on the Shelton Laurel Massacre, the killing of 13 men and boys accused of supporting the North. Those executions, and the ongoing skirmishes between Southern troops and Madison County bushwhackers, led to hatred, fear, and bitterness that lasted for years after the war’s end.

Lane tells her story through several protagonists, thereby presenting the truth as to what happened and why, in a sort of glass prism of viewpoints. We hear from James Keith, who ordered the executions, from Polly Allen, whose husband is Keith’s commanding officer, and from Marthy White, an impoverished teenager who lacks the ability to speak. Judy Shelton has children and a lover, but refuses to marry for fear a man will take the property given her by her father and settled by her ancestors. Despite his protestations against the War, Simeon Ramsey winds up conscripted into the Rebel army and forced to participate in the massacre. 

There are many reasons to add And The Crows Took Their Eyes to your bookshelf. Lane has an eye for description, bringing both the people and the hills to life on the page, and an ear for the subtleties of local speech. Her painstaking and meticulous research for this novel—the clothing worn by the characters, the food they eat, the work they do—are evident in every paragraph. 

Here, for example, is Marthy White’s description of a corn shucking the year after the War had ended:

“There was a great crowd of folks in the barn, setting around the biggest pile of field corn you ever saw. It was a working but it was something like a play party, too, for there was to be prizes for the man, woman, boy, and girl that shucked the most in ten minutes and Billy Ray had brought his fiddle to speed the work.”

One interesting facet of Lane’s novel is her recognition of the part played by religion in the lives of most of these characters. Whether in history books or novels set in the past, all too often the writers overlook the importance of faith to our ancestors. Lane renders the prayers, the singing, and the sermons as natural to these folks as the sky or the running streams. And The Crows Took Their Eyes is not at all a “Christian novel,” but realistically depicts what people then believed and how they expressed that belief.

Despite the atrocities committed by both sides in this war within a war—the book’s title refers to the corpses of the executed, ravaged by wild hogs and crows before they are found and buried—several of the characters rise above the violence and the hardships to help neighbors in need. Judith Shelton takes the mute Marthy under her wing and acts as a second mother to her, giving her advice on marriage and comforting her when she grieves the death of a boy she loves. Simeon Ramsey often steps up to assist neighbors with chopping wood or other chores, and the peddler whom we meet in the opening pages of the book appears now and again, offering sage advice and helping to bury a young man killed by a bushwhacker. 

Eventually, redemption and reconciliation of a sort take place. In one powerful scene, an itinerant preacher appears and delivers a fiery sermon urging his listeners to forgive one another for whatever wrongs they have committed. A series of public confessions follow, with forgiveness asked and given by various members of the community. As Simeon Ramsey notes after the first confession, “And it is like a dam had let loose and folks are pushing and shoving to take their turn and confess to one another. I set there quiet, listening to their puny little sins and marveling at how their faces light up as they are forgiven and make their way back to where they were setting, only to have those around them smile and pat them on the back.”

If you’re looking to explore our mountains, and if you want to take a trip into the past whose bitter quarrels have ramifications for our present, then And The Crows Took Their Eyes is the book for you.