The short version is that Sally Harpe is Giselle on Kentucky's Green River.
Here’s the long version. Sometime in 1997, Ellen Datlow invited me to submit a story for one of the anthologies of revisioned fairy tales that she was editing with Terri Windling. Setting a pattern that continues to this day, I said yes and then finished the story roughly a year after the book was actually published. First, of course, I asked for a special favor--instead of a fairy tale I wanted to base my story on a ballet, specifically on Giselle, which I’d recently seen performed by the excellent Louisville Ballet.
Like many of the classic ballets, the story line of Giselle is creepy as all hell. It seemed ripe for a little of the Southern gothification I was trying to work out of my system. It’s also got some very significant artists behind it: the ballet was first choreographed by Jean Coralli from a libretto by Théophile Gautier and a score by Adolphe Charles Adam. When it debuted, at the Paris Opera (then housed at the Salle Le Peletier--that site's well worth a look for the pictures at the bottom, even if you don't read French) in June of 1841, the role of Giselle was originated by Carlotta Grisi (that’s her in the painting to the right). Some of the best of music, writing, and dance in all of Europe came together that night. Can you imagine being there?
I wrote the story long hand, in a blue clothbound notebook that I still have. Since I missed the deadline, I sent it to Shawna McCarthy at Realms of Fantasy, who regular readers will remember had purchased two of my earlier Cane County stories as well. I was living in Michigan by the time I heard back from her. The letter was waiting for me when I flew back from the World Fantasy Convention in Monterey in 1998 (that turned out to be one of the most important trips I ever took in terms of beginning new friendships, by the way).
When the story eventually appeared, in the October 1999 issue of the magazine, it was accompanied by a very creepy and appropriate illustration by the famous horror artist JK Potter. It’s an extensively reworked photo montage of ghostly girls and ghostly deer and well, you should try to track down a copy of that magazine just to have a look at it.
Sally Harpe is my personal favorite of that first triptych of Cane County stories. It has its excesses, but overall I think it’s a pretty good story, and one I’d be proud to publish even today. It was listed as an Honorable Mention in the thirteenth Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and was reprinted in my chapbook, Bittersweet Creek. In December of 2003, Small Beer Press also reprinted the story at their website, and it’s that reprint I’ll point you to for this entry in the Virtual Collection.