DECEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
Narrators Karen White and Elizabeth Wiley 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. Wiley is the believable elderly voice of her daughter Lilly, who writes a letter to Ella’s grandson 79 years later to share the heroism and tragic consequences of those efforts. A powerful look at a dark chapter in our history when desperate people fought for equity and respect. N.E.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
08/28/2017
Cash (A Land More Kind than Home) transports readers into the world of real-life ballad singer Ella May Wiggins, a central figure in workers’ battle for unionization in North Carolina textile mills, who was shot and killed on Sept. 14, 1929. Alone, pregnant, caring for six sick children, and frightened of losing her job if she takes another day off, Ella uses her Sunday to hitch a ride to a union gathering. Quickly recognized for her courage after fighting off anti-union attackers, she’s asked to share a song with the crowd: “We leave our homes in the morning,/ We kiss our children good-bye./ While we slave for the bosses,/ Our children scream and cry.” Her message connects, and she instantly becomes a sensation. With this unlikely platform and her unexpected power, Ella May attempts to integrate unions across North Carolina mills, attracting the wrath of union busters, segregationists, and the powerful wealthy class. 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. (Oct.)This review has been corrected. A previous version listed the wrong imprint.
From the Publisher
A powerful book that speaks to contemporary concerns through historical injustice… 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
“Wiley Cash reveals the dignity and humanity of people asking for a fair shot in an unfair world. Fraught with the turmoil of social change, The Last Ballad moves inexorably toward a devastating moment of reckoning. A timely and topical portrait of a community in crisis.” — Christina Baker Kline, author of A Piece of the World and Orphan Train
“Cash pulls no punches in this gorgeous, gut-wrenching novel, and that’s entirely as it should be for a story of desperate people. In an era when American workers are besieged as they haven’t been since the Great Depression, I can think of no more relevant novel for our times.” — Ben Fountain, Author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk on The Last Ballad
“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
“Told with grace and compassion, The Last Ballad is an enthralling narrative and a powerful reminder of the immense sacrifices made for workers in the United States.” — Shelf Awareness
“Elegantly and movingly woven ... The Last Ballad is simultaneously the evocation of an exemplary individual and the portrait of an era.” — The Guardian (UK)
“It’s impossible not to hear echoes of Steinbeck in Cash’s sprawling, multi-voiced account of a battered, hopeless woman who rises up to become the symbol of a movement… Ella May Wiggins, it seems, sings not only of the forgotten past, but for our time too.” — Chapter 16
“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, author of The Midnight Cool on The Last Ballad
“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
“Beautifully and evocatively written, The Last Ballad should take a place on the honor roll of Southern fiction that will stand the test of time… Cash deftly builds the suspense and tension about what will happen, and why and when… One powerful and haunting story.” — Greensboro News & Record
“Cash honors his subjects… in his telling of their bravery at the forefront of societal and economic changes that would in time reshape our American lives. But Cash’s tale is foremost a cautionary one, a reminder of just how precarious liberties are… Heartrending.” — Charleston Post & Courier
“Resonates with pain, love, the struggle of life and the gross injustices of the world. I hated leaving Ella May’s world, reveled in watching her bravery against unspeakable odds and her unending support of racial equality… A riveting story.” — Louisiana Book News
“With his vibrant imagination, vigorous research, and his architectural skill in structuring this novel, Wiley Cash has lifted the events of the past into the present and immortalized a time that holds valuable lessons for our country today.” — Charlotte Observer
“Wiley Cash’s third novel is a sweeping, old-fashioned saga with an inspirational but ill-fated heroine at its center… Ella May is such a rich, sympathetic character… Powerful and moving, exploring complex historical issues that are still with us today.” — BookPage.com
“Here, a time and a place and a tragedy written about many times before is rendered anew in vivid, devastating detail. Cash’s tightly wound and heavily researched novel is all the more heartbreaking because these struggles remain so resonant today.” — Our State
“This is the very best kind of historical novel… Cash is a fine and subtle writer, who tells an American story … replete with personal, political, sexual, racial and class strife, yet redeemed by gritty individual and community faith in a better, fairer world.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
Lydia Peelle
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.
Shelf Awareness
Told with grace and compassion, The Last Ballad is an enthralling narrative and a powerful reminder of the immense sacrifices made for workers in the United States.
Ben Fountain
Cash pulls no punches in this gorgeous, gut-wrenching novel, and that’s entirely as it should be for a story of desperate people. In an era when American workers are besieged as they haven’t been since the Great Depression, I can think of no more relevant novel for our times.
Chapter 16
It’s impossible not to hear echoes of Steinbeck in Cash’s sprawling, multi-voiced account of a battered, hopeless woman who rises up to become the symbol of a movement… Ella May Wiggins, it seems, sings not only of the forgotten past, but for our time too.
New York Times Book Review
A powerful book that speaks to contemporary concerns through historical injustice… 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.
The Guardian (UK)
Elegantly and movingly woven ... The Last Ballad is simultaneously the evocation of an exemplary individual and the portrait of an era.
Greensboro News & Record
Beautifully and evocatively written, The Last Ballad should take a place on the honor roll of Southern fiction that will stand the test of time… Cash deftly builds the suspense and tension about what will happen, and why and when… One powerful and haunting story.
Christina Baker Kline
Wiley Cash reveals the dignity and humanity of people asking for a fair shot in an unfair world. Fraught with the turmoil of social change, The Last Ballad moves inexorably toward a devastating moment of reckoning. A timely and topical portrait of a community in crisis.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
This is the very best kind of historical novel… Cash is a fine and subtle writer, who tells an American story … replete with personal, political, sexual, racial and class strife, yet redeemed by gritty individual and community faith in a better, fairer world.
Charlotte Observer
With his vibrant imagination, vigorous research, and his architectural skill in structuring this novel, Wiley Cash has lifted the events of the past into the present and immortalized a time that holds valuable lessons for our country today.
Charleston Post & Courier
Cash honors his subjects… in his telling of their bravery at the forefront of societal and economic changes that would in time reshape our American lives. But Cash’s tale is foremost a cautionary one, a reminder of just how precarious liberties are… Heartrending.
BookPage.com
Wiley Cash’s third novel is a sweeping, old-fashioned saga with an inspirational but ill-fated heroine at its center… Ella May is such a rich, sympathetic character… Powerful and moving, exploring complex historical issues that are still with us today.
Our State
Here, a time and a place and a tragedy written about many times before is rendered anew in vivid, devastating detail. Cash’s tightly wound and heavily researched novel is all the more heartbreaking because these struggles remain so resonant today.”
Louisiana Book News
Resonates with pain, love, the struggle of life and the gross injustices of the world. I hated leaving Ella May’s world, reveled in watching her bravery against unspeakable odds and her unending support of racial equality… A riveting story.
Charlotte Observer
With his vibrant imagination, vigorous research, and his architectural skill in structuring this novel, Wiley Cash has lifted the events of the past into the present and immortalized a time that holds valuable lessons for our country today.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on A Land More Kind than Home
A beautifully written morality tale.
Sacramento Bee on A Land More Kind than Home
A much-respected debut with a genuine sense of place.
Bobbie Ann Mason
A riveting story! The writing is bold, daring, graceful, and engrossing.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer on A Land More Kind than Home
A smooth, elegant, and enjoyable novel. . . . Mr. Cash has fantastic talent which is sure to make him a rising star in the literary world.
Entertainment Weekly on A Land More Kind than Home
Absorbing . . . Cash uses well-placed flashbacks to flesh out his characters . . . and to illuminate a familiar truth of Southern lit: Many are the ways that fathers fail their sons.
Washington Post on A Land More Kind than Home
Cash adeptly captures the rhythms of Appalachian speech, narrating his atmospheric novel in the voices of three characters . . . The story has elements of a thriller, but Cash is ultimately interested in how unscrupulous individuals can bend decent people to their own dark ends.
Booklist on A Land More Kind than Home
Cash is a graceful and promising writer, and his story and characters will linger in readers’ memories.
BookPage on A Land More Kind than Home
Cash proves capable of handling dialect and multiple narrators while creating distinctive voices and fully developed characters. . . . The result is a compelling, fast-paced story.
Rikki Ducornet
Cinematic and symphonic: this is a compelling story revealed in a sequence of voices that are as pitch-perfect as they are irresistible. This is a wonderfully impressive debut: tender, muscled and unforgettable.
Cleveland Plain Dealer on A Land More Kind than Home
Greek tragedy meets Southern Gothic . . . Evocative and quietly chilling, this novel of trust misplaced and love gone wrong is reason to hope for more from Wiley Cash.
Fred Chappell
I try to state the truth and dislike flinging superlatives about with mad abandon, but I have been so deeply impressed by this novel that only superlatives can convey the tenor of my thought: this is one of the most powerful novels I have ever read.
RT Book Reviews (top pick) on A Land More Kind than Home
Mysterious, and indirectly creepy, which will have a powerful effect on readers. . . . Riveting, disturbing and lyrical, this novel is full of surprises the entire way through and will have readers glued to it from the start.
Toronto Sun on A Land More Kind than Home
Spellbinding.
Ernest J. Gaines
The first thing that struck me about Wiley’s novel is the beautiful prose: the narrative is strong, clean, direct and economical. . . . I think this could be the beginning of a long, fruitful career.
Clyde Edgerton
This book will knock your socks off. It’s so good to read a first novel that sings with talent. Wiley Cash has a beautifully written hit on his hands.
Oklahoma City Oklahoman on A Land More Kind than Home
This is a chilling story that isn’t easily forgotten. . . . and Cash has captured the rural southern dialect perfectly. It is an excellent novel.
Gail Godwin
This novel has great cumulative power. Before I knew it I was grabbed by the ankle and pulled down into a full-blown Greek tragedy.
Nancy Peacock
Whew! Wiley Cash is the real deal and his first novel is an atmospheric crossroads filled with characters who long for better, but know that their best will never be good enough, is dense with stories intersecting like the branches in a laurel hell.
John Lawton
Wiley Cash makes his debut with this fine, engaging novel, proving yet again that the South is an inexhaustible motherlode of literature. I’m sure he’ll garner comparisons to Harper Lee, perhaps even to Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor, but Wiley Cash is Wiley Cash—a new, strong Southern voice in American fiction.
Salisbury Post (NC) on A Land More Kind than Home
Wiley Cash’s debut novel tells a powerful story of lust, envy, [and] greed . . . Cash does an excellent job of building tension, and of making the impetus for all this damage a terrifying figure.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution on A Land More Kind than Home
Wiley Cash’s novel embeds a tender coming-of-age story within a suspense-filled thriller. . . . [A] clear-sighted, graceful debut.
Financial Times (UK) on A Land More Kind than Home
With a couple of scenes so unnerving that they’ll make you yelp, and the most villainous preacher since Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter, it’s an electrifying debut.
New York Times Book Review on This Dark Road to Mercy
The voice is Southern and oh so charming in This Dark Road to Mercy, a crime novel that’s also a road movie and a baseball tale and a wicked twist on Sixth-Grade Father-Daughter Night.
Jess Walter
This Dark Road to Mercy is a terrific, moving and propulsive novel: Harper Lee by way of Elmore Leonard.
Wilmington Star News on This Dark Road to Mercy
This Dark Road to Mercy will stick in readers’ minds, especially Cash’s heroine, feisty, red-haired and freckled Easter, who joins Scout and Kaye Gibbons’ Ellen Foster in the pantheon of Southern kids in literature.
Chicago Tribune on This Dark Road to Mercy
A heartfelt and nuanced story, exploring the lines between fear and trust, redemption and love.
Jill McCorkle
A time capsule and at times an edgy thriller, but at its fine emotional center it’s all about what it means to be a father.
O Magazine on This Dark Road to Mercy
Darkly mesmerizing.
The Guardian (UK) on This Dark Road to Mercy
Exciting and suspenseful as well as moving, with a captivating heroine, this is a tremendous book.
Charlotte Observer on This Dark Road to Mercy
The book shows several joyful, painful and sometimes contradictory aspects of what it means to be a father.
New York Times Book Review on A Land More Kind than Home
Mesmerizing . . . only Jess knows why his autistic older brother died on the very day he was taken into the church, and it’s his voice that we carry away from this intensely felt and beautifully told story.
Library Journal
08/01/2017
This third novel from a promising young voice in Southern fiction (A Land More Kind Than Home) concerns a North Carolina woman's fight for workers' rights. By 1929, 28-year-old Ella May Wiggins has had four children, the eldest of whom watches the others while their mother works nights at American Mill No. 2 as a spinner, and a husband who disappeared shortly after a fifth child died in infancy. Hearing of a rally in nearby Gastonia advocating a minimum wage and a 40-hour workweek, Ella May sees no choice but to attend. When asked to speak about mill conditions, she instead delivers a moving song of her own creation, becoming the face of the union struggle—and a target for anti-Communists. As in his previous books, Cash uses various voices from different periods to tell his story, here including a mill owner, a train porter, and Ella May's elderly daughter reflecting on her mother's complicated legacy in 2005. He writes with earnestness and great sympathy but reveals the outcome early, taking the bite out of the story's climax. VERDICT Admirers of Ron Rash's Serena and its Appalachian setting will find much to like here. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/17.]—Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ
DECEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
Narrators Karen White and Elizabeth Wiley 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. Wiley is the believable elderly voice of her daughter Lilly, who writes a letter to Ella’s grandson 79 years later to share the heroism and tragic consequences of those efforts. A powerful look at a dark chapter in our history when desperate people fought for equity and respect. N.E.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2017-08-03
Inspired by the events of an actual textile-mill strike in 1929, Cash (This Dark Road to Mercy, 2014, etc.) creates a vivid picture of one woman's desperation.Ella May Wiggins works long, grueling hours in a mill, but it still isn't enough to keep her children fed. The year is 1929, and fed-up workers are fighting for rights like a standard wage, a five-day work week, and equal pay for equal work. Ella's curiosity about the union leads her to attend a rally in a neighboring town, but when she gets up on stage to sing a song that she wrote, she becomes an unexpected star of the labor movement. Her prominence makes her a target for those who view union members as communists, and Ella's belief that African-Americans should be included in the union places her in even more danger. But Ella's voice isn't the only one Cash explores—there are multiple points of view, including Ella's now-elderly daughter Lilly, an African-American porter named Hampton, and several others whose lives intersect with Ella's. Cash vividly illustrates the difficulties of Ella's life; her exhaustion and desperation leap off the page. She faces extreme hardship in her fight for workers' rights, but it's always clear that she keeps going because of her love for her children. Although it is initially a bit difficult to keep so many points of view straight, it is satisfying to see them all connect. It's refreshing that Cash highlights the struggles of often forgotten heroes and shows how crucial women and African-Americans were in the fight for workers' rights. A heartbreaking and beautifully written look at the real people involved in the labor movement.
