Three days before Christmas in 1831, Frankie Silver killed her husband, Charles Silver, with an axe and burned his body in the fireplace. Author Perry Deane Young, whose ancestors were involved in the case, began collecting material about it as a teenager. As a college student, he was astounded to learn that most of what he had been told was actually false. Abused by her husband, Frankie killed in self defense. The laws of that time would not allow her to take the stand and explain what happened. She was unjustly hanged in July of 1833. Young proves the real crime is the way this poor woman has been misrepresented by balladeers and historians all these years.

"Perry Deane Young provides important historical background to this fascinating story... Young is able to build suspense, even for a story many of his readers may already know...By personalizing both Frankie Silver's story and his own search for it, Young has given readers an interesting and well-written book about history and the way it is created." --Lynn Moss Sanders in Appalachian Journal

"Most of my life I've heard stories about a pretty mountain lady who was hanged for nothing more serious than murdering her husband. Here, and I can say at last after one and a half centuries, is the true account, thoroughly researched and beautifully presented. It's a highroad journey into this Appalachian mystery." --John Ehle, author of The Land Breakers, The Road, The Journey of August King

On April 6, 1970, Vietnam War photojournalists Sean Flynn (son of Errol Flynn) and Dana Stone set off on two rented motorcycles to cover one last story and were captured by Communist forces, never to be seen or heard from again. Their friend and fellow journalist, Perry Deane Young, tells their story here in a remarkable memoir first published in 1975. This new Press 53 Classics edition features photos by Flynn, Stone, their friends Tim Page, Nik Wheeler, and others, including a new chapter with updates on the lives of those involved and the ongoing search for two of the missing.

HANGED BY A DREAM?

On a bitterly cold winter's night in January 1881, Joshua Young was disturbed by an incredible dream or vision. A young woman with a broken neck appealed to him for help. He kept trying to sleep but the dream persisted. Next morning, he and a neighbor stopped a funeral cortege that was walking by. When they opened the casket, Joshua was astounded to see the woman's face from his dream. He lifted her body up and her head fell back. Young held the husband and sent for the coroner and sheriff. The woman's husband, Stephen Effler, was tried, convicted and hanged for beating his wife to death.

Author Perry Deane Young had heard this story about his grandfather's first cousin from the time he was a child growing up on a farm in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Recently, he went in search of the facts behind the many tall tales and legends. This led him to the trial documents and the murderers own chilling confession written in gory detail the day before he was hanged. Young is the author of nine non-fiction books and two plays. His book, The Untold Story of Frankie Silver, tells another true Appalachian story of a woman who cut her husband's head off with an axe. Young found some similarities and many telling differences in the stories. Frankie Silver was hanged because she could not take the stand in her own defense; Stephen Effler was hanged because he did testify and lied. Hundreds of people signed petitions to save Frankie from the gallows; nobody thought Effler was innocent.