Ruth Ann Musick (September 17, 1897 – July 2, 1974) was an American writer and folklorist specializing in West Virginia.
[1] It dealt with the primitive conditions of her native Chariton River Valley and its tensions with the college of osteopathic medicine in nearby Kirksville, Missouri.
While the novel reflects in some measure her grappling with her brief and unhappy marriage to an alcoholic artist, which ended in divorce in 1941, it draws heavily on events, people, and folk beliefs that surrounded her in her childhood.
According to her eulogy by William Hugh Jansen, Folklore Professor at the University of Kentucky, she had become “a public relations agent for West Virginia Folklore.” At the same time, she wrote two folklore columns for West Virginia newspapers: “The Old Folks Say” for the Times-West Virginian in Fairmont and “Sassafras Tea” for the Allegheny Journal in Elkins and Marlinton, while making numerous conference appearances, publishing regularly in a wide variety of journals, offering workshops and public presentations, and giving talks on radio and television.
Dr. Musick was diagnosed with spinal cancer on November 8, 1973, and died July 2, 1974, in Fairmont, West Virginia, at age 76.