A Tree Accurst: Bobby McMillon and Stories of Frankie Silver

On a wintry night in 1831, a man named Charlie Silver was murdered with an axe and his body burned in a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. His young wife, Frankie Silver, was tried and hanged for the crime. In later years people claimed that a tree growing near the ruins of the old cabin was cursed — that anyone who climbed into it would be unable to get out. Daniel Patterson uses this “accurst” tree as a metaphor for the grip the story of the murder has had on the imaginations of th...