Named a Best Book of 2017 by the Chicago Public Library and the American Library Association
Wiley Cash reveals the dignity and humanity of people asking for a fair shot in an unfair
world. - Christina Baker Kline author of A Piece of the World and Orphan Train 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.
