DG Martin interviews Sheila Kay Adams - My Old True Love

Author Sheila Kay Adams, a seventh-generation balladeer and native of Madison County, appears on UNC-TV’s weekly local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch to describe how she has turned the oral history of her family into a stunning debut novel. In Adam’s novel My Old True Love, the author yields a story inspired by her ancestors and ballads of the English, Scottish, and Irish. These long, sad stories of heartbreak and betrayal, violence and love, have been sung for generations by the descendents of those who settled the Appalachian Mountains in the 1700s. As they raised their children, the settlers taught them first to sing—as the songs seemed to tell the children everything they needed to know about life.