Q&A with author, alumna Sharyn McCrumb

Sharyn McCrumb is a UNC graduate and New York Times Best-Selling Author. She will be at Flyleaf Books today to read and sign her novel “King’s Mountain,” which follows the story of Patriot leader John Sevier during a Revolutionary War battle.

McCrumb spoke with staff writer Ally Levine about this seldom-told story of the South during the war.

Daily Tar Heel: What inspired you to write your book “King’s Mountain”?

Sharyn McCrumb: I went to school in North Carolina. We studied the American Revolution every time American history came up, and nobody ever mentioned anything that happened south of Maryland. Nobody ever mentioned anything happening around here. It turns out that King’s Mountain, which is about 26 miles west of Charlotte, was called by Thomas Jefferson “the turning point of the war.” And I thought people ought to know about it.

DTH: Could you give me a brief summary of your book?

SM: It is the events leading up to the Revolutionary War battle at King’s Mountain.

It starts when a British officer sends a threatening letter to Isaac Shelby, who lives on the frontier, and the British officer says, “If you people over at the mountains there don’t stay out of the war, then I am going to come up there and burn your woods and kill your families.”

Well, when they got this letter, they considered it a personal invitation to enter the war.

So, they got all their militias together and went looking for this guy and his regiment. They found him at King’s Mountain and the battle lasted an hour and he was killed and they won.

So, what I did was to take all of the different commanders and show you who the people were involved.

I didn’t make anything up or change anything. What I did was to try to bring an actual historical event to life so that, in reading it, you could feel that you were there.

DTH: What do you want people to get out of the book?

SM: I want them to learn about the battle and also to get an appreciation for the caliber of people that we had here in the 18th century, because this army that they put together was not part of the regular army under George Washington.

They just got together. They were not given horses, uniforms, food, and nobody ever paid them, nor did they expect to be paid. They just did it because it needed doing.

DTH: What do you try to achieve in your writing?

SM: All of my books are set in either western North Carolina or east Tennessee, and one goal in those books is to combat the stereotypes that we have concerning the mountain region — you know, the whole hillbilly business.

I try to show what the culture is really like.

I think the folklore, the legends, the customs, what we brought over from Britain, and put it together and try and give an actual account of life in the mountains.

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