Educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a master's degree in English from Virginia Tech, McCrumb was the first writer-in-residence at King College in Tennessee.

Her novels, studied in universities throughout the world, have been translated into eleven languages, including French, German, Dutch, Japanese, Arabic, and Italian.

McCrumb has also taught a writers workshop in Paris and served as writer-in-residence at King College in Tennessee and at the Chautauqua Institute in western New York.

These books weave together the legends, geography and contemporary issues of Appalachia, and each centers on an event from North Carolina history.

[8] Her inspiration for the novel came from her study of medieval literature at Virginia Tech and her desire to update Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.