Sharyn McCrumb on her latest stories from the South

Courtesy Sharyn McCrumb

Sharyn McCrumb and Adam Edwards, co-authors of "Faster Pastor" (left); McCrumb's other new novel (right) is set in Wise.

Best-selling author Sharyn McCrumb is a true child of the South.

McCrumb was influenced by two different aspects of Southern culture: Her maternal family comes from the Piedmont area, which McCrumb sees as a reflection of the "plantation" South, while her father's family is from the Appalachian Mountain region.

"If you want to understand the background of the mountain Southerners, watch 'Braveheart.' I felt closer to the legends, ballads and fragments of rural life from the mountains than from the plantation South," said McCrumb.

This love of the land and its intricate images, coupled with legends of local tragedies and crimes, form the main plot lines of many of her "Ballad" novels, which she began publishing in 1990 with "If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O."

Each Ballad novel centers on a theme. In "She Walks These Hills," McCrumb focused on journeys, while in "The Rosewood Casket" she explored the loss of the land, which defines so many mountain families.

McCrumb uses different characters to pick up the threads of the theme and weave a verbal quilt. In her new Ballad novel, "The Devil Amongst the Lawyers," due out on June 22, she takes a true story from 1935 in Wise "to examine the way that the national media uses cultural stereotyping to sensationalize a story, especially one set in a rural Southern area."

After a successful writing career with her Ballad novels, McCrumb tackled another piece of Southern heritage: NASCAR.

"I think it was more my annoyance with the casual bigotry of the self-appointed cultural elite" that made her want to challenge stereotypes about what is a truly native Southern sport, said McCrumb.

"I have friends who are engineers, lawyers and collectors of first editions who are NASCAR fans ... and some are NASCAR drivers," she said.

McCrumb combined English literature with NASCAR in her critical success, "St. Dale." In this book, a group of NASCAR fans meet on a bus tour of tracks where Dale Earnhardt raced. Along the way, the fans tell their stories and seek personal redemption as they grapple with their response to Earnhardt's death.

If this all sounds familiar, it is because McCrumb updated Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," where pilgrims meet on a trip to a cathedral to pay respects to the fallen Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. "St. Dale" is frequently taught in high school and college literature courses alongside Chaucer's work.

Her latest NASCAR work, "Faster Pastor," is a comedy and the first novel McCrumb wrote with a co-author. She selected Adam Edwards, an ARCA driver who provided technical advice on an earlier novel, "Once Around the Track."

Both McCrumb and Edwards said at the beginning of the collaboration they had doubts about successfully working together. Said McCrumb of her impression of race car drivers: "They have the attention span of a ferret on crack. They can't write books."

Both agreed to try writing together. McCrumb wrote the first thousand words and sent them to Edwards, who wrote the next thousand words, and so on. In about a year, they finished "Faster Pastor" and found a publisher. The official release date is April 1, but McCrumb said she hopes to have copies ready for sale when she and Edwards come to Smith Mountain Lake on Tuesday for a fundraiser for the Westlake Library's capital campaign.

McCrumb and Edwards are working on their next collaboration and have completed the first four chapters. Still untitled, it takes place in a nursing home/rehabilitation center.

"What happens when you get what you wish for professionally and you still don't live happily ever after?" asked McCrumb.

In the story, an injured young driver tells an old man in a wheelchair, "This is just a setback, old man! Someday I'm going to ... win the Daytona 500." The old man in the chair says, "I already did."

McCrumb will speak Tuesday, March 2 at 7 p.m. at Trinity Ecumenical Parish at Virginia 122 and Lakemount Drive in Moneta. Joining her will be Edwards, co-author of "Faster Pastor." McCrumb will donate a preview copy of "The Devil Amongst the Lawyers" for auction as a library fundraiser. Tickets, which are free, are available at the Westlake Library.