Fiddler's Ghost

Don’t be affeared of what you’re about to read: Fiddler’s Ghost, voted one of the “Best Books of 2007” by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and “Gold Medal Winner” by the 2008 Independent Publisher’s Association, comes highly acclaimed. Mitch Jayne, though born elsewhere, felt the pull of the Ozarks the first time he laid eyes on them. This immediate and abiding affection for his adopted region kindled such a sense of place that he subsequently devoted his teaching, writing, radio gigs, and musical career to highlighting the Ozark Mountains and the people – and their stories – who inhabit them. Fiddler’s Ghost, a highly authentic and readable first-person narrative, begins in 1951, when Steve Clark accepts a teaching job in a one-room school in the Missouri Ozarks and moves with his pregnant wife Lacey to the backwoods community of Indian Glade. Surrounded by Ozark characters who remain absorbed with old customs and beliefs and schoolchildren who still speak Elizabethan English, the Clarks move into what they consider an ideal home, though they are forewarned by locals that “The last folks lived there claimed it weren’t natural…” Upon encountering their unnatural cohabitant, Steve and Lacey begin to unravel the mystery of the fiddler’s ghost. As the novel unfolds and Hiram becomes ever more lifelike, the time-travel connection to music becomes ever more real… Michael Patrick, historian, folklorist, and associate professor emeritus of literature at the University of Missouri, calls Fiddler’s Ghost “…the rarest of books. I could hardly put it down…Only Mitch Jayne could write a novel with a perfect understanding of the music and dialect of the Missouri Ozarks.” Donald Harington, professor of art history at the University of Arkansas, chimes in that, “The world of literature, novels and tales is teeming with ghosts aplenty. But you never met a ghost like this one before. He’s too good to be true, but too true to be make-believe.” Fiddler’s Ghost is available at Amazon.com, www.wildstonemedia.com, and through Big River Distribution and The Bullet, the Andy Griffith Show Re-Run Watchers Club. # # # Author Mitch Jayne, his personality and career as colorful as the Ozark Mountains themselves, has devoted his life to the region and people he loves. This tireless writer, teacher, beloved radio host, singer, songwriter, and double bass player with the bluegrass group the Dillards has written three previous books, published numerous articles in magazines such as Outdoor Life and the Saturday Evening Post, written TV material for Dick Clark Productions, and appeared a number of times with his group as “The Darling Boys” on the Andy Griffith Show in the 1970s. Indefatigable, mischievous, and downright funny, Jayne is as incorrigible – and memorable – as his subject matter.