Book excerpt: "From a Race of Storytellers will also be attractive to the general reader who wants to read more about the characters who inhabit McCrumb's fictional Hamelin, Tennessee, and to better understand the events that occur there. Through essays written by fourteen different scholars of McCrumb's fiction and one by McCrumb herself, readers will gain a deeper understanding of the real southern Appalachian mountains, not just the popular image."--BOOK JACKET.