Overview

The New York Times bestselling author of the celebrated A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy returns with this eagerly awaited new novel, set in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by actual events. The chronicle of an ordinary woman's struggle for dignity and her rights in a textile mill, The Last Ballad is a moving tale of courage in the face of oppression and injustice, with the emotional power of Ron Rash's Serena, Dennis Lehane's The Given Day, and the unforgettable films Norma Rae and Silkwood. Twelve times a week, twenty-eight-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill's owners--the newly arrived Goldberg brothers--white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May's best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for seventy-two hours of work each week, it's the only opportunity she has. Her no-good husband, John, has run off again, and she must keep her four young children alive with whatever work she can find. When the union leaflets begin circulating, Ella May has a taste of hope, a yearning for the better life the organizers promise. But the mill owners, backed by other nefarious forces, claim the union is nothing but a front for the Bolshevik menace sweeping across Europe. To maintain their control, the owners will use every means in their power, including bloodshed, to prevent workers from banding together. On the night of the county's biggest rally, Ella May, weighing the costs of her choice, makes up her mind to join the movement--a decision that will have lasting consequences for her children, her friends, her town--indeed all that she loves. Seventy-five years later, Ella May's daughter Lilly, now an elderly woman, tells her nephew about his grandmother and the events that transformed their family. Illuminating the most painful corners of their history, she reveals, for the first time, the tragedy that befell Ella May after that fateful union meeting in 1929. Intertwining myriad voices, Wiley Cash brings to life the heartbreak and bravery of the now forgotten struggle of the labor movement in early twentieth-century America--and pays tribute to the thousands of heroic women and men who risked their lives to win basic rights for all workers. Lyrical, heartbreaking, and haunting, this eloquent novel confirms Wiley Cash's place among our nation's finest writers.

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9781538454909

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Reviews

The Last Ballad is the story of a beautiful and courageous woman, and it is beautifully and courageously told. Wiley Cash dares give voice to people lost in the margins of history, and he brings to life their inspiring fight for justice with graceful prose, honesty, and intensity, and best of all, a wonderful bigness of heart. -- Lydia Peelle, award-winning author of The Midnight Cool [Cash] writes with earnestness and great sympathy...Admirers of Ron Rash's Serena and its Appalachian setting will find much to like here. -- Library Journal Inspired by the events of an actual textile-mill strike in 1929, Cash creates a vivid picture of one woman's desperation...A heartbreaking and beautifully written look at the real people involved in the labor movement. -- Kirkus Reviews This suspenseful, moving novel is a story of struggle and personal sacrifice for the greater good that will resonate with readers of John Steinbeck or Ron Rash. -- Publishers Weekly Cash vividly blends the archival with the imaginative...With care and steadiness, (Cash) has pulled from the wreckage of the past a lost moment of Southern progressivism. Perhaps fiction can help us bear the burden of Southern history. -- New York Times Book Review Lives are changed forever in this intimate and yet expansive novel...a timely and topical portrait of a community in crisis. -- Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author Narrators Karen White and Elizabeth Wylie use pacing and tone to bring characters to life in this novel about Ella Mae Wiggins, a forgotten heroine of history. For the bulk of the story White's capable voice projects desperation and hope as Ella Mae struggles to support her family amid deplorable working conditions that lead, finally, to her commitment to strive for fair treatment. White gives unique voices to mill owners, union organizers, and Ella's fellow workers. Wylie is the believable elderly voice of her daughter Lilly...Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award. -- AudioFile

Author Information

Wiley Cash is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home and the acclaimed This Dark Road to Mercy. He won the SIBA Book Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and has been nominated for many other awards. A native of North Carolina, he has held fellowships at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. He is the writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and teaches creative writing in the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA program. He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife and two daughters. Karen White is a classically trained actress who has been recording audiobooks since 1999. An Audie Award finalist, she has earned eight AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her reading of The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed was named one of AudioFile's Best Audiobooks of 2009. Elizabeth Wiley, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, is a seasoned actor, dialect coach, and theater professor. In addition to her growing portfolio of audiobooks, her voice can be heard in The Idea of America, Colonial Williamsburg's virtual learning curriculum; in Paul Meier's e-textbook Speaking Shakespeare; and modeling US-English on one of the world's top language-learning products.

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