Met Her on the Mountain

The Murder of Nancy Morgan

By: Mark I. Pinsky

Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby

In June of 1970, the body of twenty-four-year-old Nancy Morgan was found inside a government-owned car in Madison County, North Carolina. It had been four days since anyone had heard from the bubbly, hard-working brunette who had moved to the Appalachian community less than a year prior as an organizer for Volunteers in Service to America. At the time of her death, her tenure in the Tar Heel State was just weeks from ending, her intentions set on New York and nursing school and a new life that she would never see. The initial investigation was thwarted by inept police work, jurisdictional confusion, and the influence of local corruption. Fourteen years would pass before an arrest in the case would be made, but even then, a pall would be cast over the veracity of the evidence.

Met Her on the Mountain is the culmination of former Los Angeles Times staff writer Mark Pinsky's efforts to solve the forty-year-old mystery once and for all. An exhaustive piece of investigative journalism, Pinsky's work, now with a new postscript, dissects this modern Southern Gothic tale and takes listeners on a journey to convince them that the truth of Morgan's murder is within reach.

©2013 Mark I. Pinsky (P)2022 Tantor

Outstanding listen

What an outstanding effort! Author Mark Pinsky really knows how to draw the reader in as he narrates his five-decade pursuit of Nancy Morgan’s murderer. This book has everything – good cops, bad cops, courtroom drama, a likeable, attractive victim, legal forensics, an isolated rural setting, a falsely accused defendant, other likely suspects, lots of other unusual characters and a talented writer who would let go of the case.
The narration moves forward at a brisk pace from the time the author first learned about the murder while he was in his college newspaper office to his 2022 dealings with North Carolina officials. In between we learn about Madison County, NC, and we get to know Nancy Morgan. We meet the whole cast of Madison County characters that Pinsky deals with as he attempts to solve the murder.
If you’re interested in a well-crafted true crime tale, this is the book for you.

Interesting but no resolution

This book follows the author's attempt to solve the murder of Nancy Dean Morgan in 1970. The author goes into great detail about all of the things he did as a journalist to get the case resolved. The amount of corruption and "good ol' boy" politics and cover-ups the author encountered threw up road block after road block, which is why the case remains unsolved. There is no resolution, but the author's ideas of who killed Nancy are plausible, if not provable.

Good account of history

Really enjoyed some of the history given in this book. Really disappointed there was no resolution.