Greater Rome Times

ST. LOUIS, Mo. - “Fiddler’s Ghost,” the latest novel by Mitch Jayne, the noted Ozark writer and humorist, has been published by Wildstone Media of St. Louis, Mo. Jayne is perhaps best known as a member of the Dillards, the influential bluegrass group that appeared on “The Andy Griffith Show” as the Darlings, a family of musical hillbillies.

Brimming with suspense, whimsical characters and Jayne’s masterful command of the Ozarks’ picturesque and earthy speech, “Fiddler’s Ghost” is receiving excellent reviews. Michael Patrick, historian/folklorist at the University of Missouri, calls the novel “...the rarest of books. I could hardly put it down...full of suspense and plot turns. Only Mitch Jayne could write a novel with a perfect understanding of the music and dialect of the Missouri Ozarks.”

The title character of “Fiddler’s Ghost” is the genteel spirit of Benjamin Springfield, a Confederate soldier and fiddler from Tennessee, who died before his time and has wandered the earth in a ghostly time warp for nearly a hundred years. In 1951, a young Missouri Ozarks couple befriends the ghost and discovers his violin hidden in a mysterious antique bed. The plot concerns the couple’s efforts to hide the true identity of their “Uncle Hiram” from the superstitious townsfolk of Indian Glade and the ghost’s realization that music is the key to his finding eternal peace. 

As a founding member of the Dillards, one of the most innovative groups in bluegrass, Jayne played bass and regaled audiences with humorous stories of his beloved Ozarks. He wrote the lyrics for numerous bluegrass standards, including “The Old Home Place,” “Dooley” and “There Is A Time.” The Dillards appeared in six episodes of “The Andy Griffith Show” as the perennially tongue-tied Darling Boys.

Jayne is the author of the acclaimed novels “The Forest in the Wind” (1966) and the Ozarks-set “Old Fish Hawk” (1969), which was adapted in 1979 as the movie “Fish Hawk” with Native American actor Will Sampson in the title role. In 2000, Wildstone Media released Jayne’s “Home Grown Stories and Home Fried Lies,” an autobiographical collection of Ozark humor. 

Mitch Jayne

Jayne and his wife, Diana, an accomplished artist who painted the evocative cover image for “Fiddler’s Ghost,” live in Eminence, Mo. Jayne’s humor column, “Driftwood,” appears weekly in The Shannon County Current Wave and is syndicated in several other Ozark newspapers. He has written for such magazines as Today’s Farmer and The Missouri Conservationist and is in demand as a lecturer on Ozark speech.

“Fiddler’s Ghost” is available directly from Wildstone Media (www.wildstonemedia.com) and on Amazon (www.amazon.com).