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    The Last Ballad: A Novel
    The Last Ballad: A Novel
    The Last Ballad: A Novel
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Last Ballad: A Novel

    Written by Wiley Cash

    Narrated by Karen White and Elizabeth Wiley

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 3, 2017
    ISBN9780062682024
    The Last Ballad: A Novel
    Author

    Wiley Cash

    Wiley Cash is the New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home, the acclaimed This Dark Road to Mercy, and most recently The Last Ballad. He is a three-time winner of the SIBA Southern Book Prize, won the Conroy Legacy Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Edgar Award for Best Novel, and has been nominated for many more. A native of North Carolina, he is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina Asheville. He lives in Wilmington, NC with his wife, photographer Mallory Cash, and their two daughters.

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    Reviews for The Last Ballad

    4/5

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    • 2/5
      This is my 3rd book from this author and my least favorite. The main character, Ella, seems to just be led by the nose by those with agendas and does not think about the true consequences of her decisions. It was clear she was doomed from early on. The story seems to go over a longer period of time than it really does. Some of the characters were thinly drawn and I didn't care about them. Don't really recommend this one.
    • 5/5
      The last ballad: a Novel by Wiley Cash
      (Scribd sudiobook)
      This book follows the journey of Ella Mae Wiggins from nighttime worker in a textile worker having to leave her Young children Alone as she works to an organizer trying to establish a union in factories.
      Set in 1929 in North Carolina, and inspired by true events. The story follows the danger all union workers faced. The thing about Ella Mae (though White herself) is she works and lived in a predominantly colored part of town. So Ella Mae’s goal was to allow colored workers into the Union. This is most likely lead to her murder .

      Told in two timelines one of Ella Mae and one from years later by one of her daughters. An intriguing,sad, buy honest look at this time in history.
    • 5/5
      I again tackle an historical novel with it’s roots in the US. I am trying to read more about the past of this country – the good and the bad. In the course of the historical record, the period covered by The Last Ballad happened about an eye blink ago. Considering the path of the United States and its progress, it happened eons ago. Although I fear given the current state of workers’ rights in this country that some of the progress made as a result of the people who fought for the unions is being lost and American labor rights are being eroded.Ella May Wiggens is living a very hard life in a mixed race community in North Carolina. She works in one of the mills – long hours, six days a week and she makes $9 for her efforts. She has made some bad choices when it comes to men and she has 5 children who rely on her. That $9 doesn’t stretch very far and when Ella May learns about a group promising better wages and working conditions she wants to know more about it so she uses her one day off to go to a union meeting. It’s there that the course of her life changes.Ella May goes to work for the union. Along the way she makes some new friends – some are very surprising. Other friendships are strengthened as she pushes the union to include her friends at the mill. They are reluctant because they are Negro and while the union is all in favor of their membership they don’t think it’s the time yet in North Carolina.The book also explores the lives of the people on the other side of the tracks – the mill owners but this is Ella May’s story and it’s a powerful tale. A trailblazing woman from history who was basically lost until this book brought her back to life.I will admit that it took me a little while to get into this book. Mr. Cash’s writing style for Ella May was rooted in her era so the rhythm of the book required a bit of adjustment. Once I did I found myself immersed in her world. It was quite often, a very unpleasant world to inhabit as you can imagine. Ella May lived in what only kindly could be called a shack with her five children and the men in her life were less than reliable. It’s a shame because she was a driven, talented and intelligent woman – far ahead of her time.The issues in this book are part of the building blocks of this country. The ordinary people who were lost in these fights are often forgotten so it’s wonderful to see someone like Ella May brought back to life in an engrossing book like this. I will note that the book has piqued my interest in learning more about the start of the labor movement in the country. I must admit that at times in my reading I was quite angry and horrified at working conditions for the people in the mill and the attitude of “management.” And trust me – my father was a man known for his distaste of unions. But in learning more about how and why they began I fully understand their need. And as noted above I fear things are going backwards in regards to worker protections so all of the work of the people like Ella May may be in vain.The Last Ballad was a book that stayed with me and it will stay on my bookshelf for I think it is one I will want to read again. There is much to find in this tale of one simple woman trying to better herself for the sake of her children. It’s everyone’s story in a way.
    • 4/5
      Historical fiction set mostly in 1929 in North Carolina where mill workers are trying to organize. They are striking for higher wages and better working conditions. They are opposed by mill owners and a group of local residents who associate unions with “Bolshevists.” Protagonist Ella May Wiggins is abandoned by her husband and joins the union movement after struggling to feed her children on nine dollars per seventy-hour work week. She works at one of the few racially integrated mills. She wants the union to include blacks in their ranks but is resisted by other mill workers.

      The story is told from eight different perspectives in two timelines. It is based on the life of a real person. Ella Wiggins is a distant relative of the author. He had grown up in the same region of the American south but had not heard her story until he was in college.

      It is a beautifully written, tragic story. The only downside, for me, is the eight perspectives. I found I was just getting into one person’s account, when the narrative shifts to something completely different. It does not flow as well as some, but it is a moving account and one I am glad to have read.
    • 5/5
      THE LAST BALLAD is set in my home state of North Carolina, and is a part of its history that was unknown to me.

      Ella May Wiggins was the epitome of an unlikely hero. Dirt poor, she works hard to support her children - those that haven't already died from the whooping cough. As with many jobs back then, worker's rights weren't on the radar. Not even a blip. You were lucky to even have the job. You want it? You do? Then do as you're told, don't ask any questions, take what we pay you, and don't you dare miss any days, or show up late, not even if your child is deathly sick.

      She works twelve hour days, six days a week, and brings home nine dollars, truly inadequate even for 1929. The job is at a mill in Bessemer City. When Ella gets called to the boss's office for having missed a night's work due to the sick child, she has a union leaflet already in her pocket, and her head is filled with possibilities. But, can she do it? Should she? What might happen? She knows in nearby Gastonia, workers had walked off the job at the Loray Mill to demand better pay, and working conditions. The governor called in the National Guard to quell the unrest, and workers were subjected to hostile treatment, like guns held to their heads, threatened and beaten. Still, union organizers persisted. They passed out leaflets with information about worker's rights.

      Once she made the decision to attend a meeting, there was no turning back for her.

      While this story is about Ella May Wiggins, Cash chose to also include other characters, and quite a bit of the book is from their perspective - but these chapters always somehow lead back to Ella May. It reminded me a little bit of how Elizabeth Strout wrote Olive Kitteridge, and Olive, Again, where one person, in this case, Olive, impacts the lives of many in one way or another, and this effect is coming from their perspective.

      We get viewpoints from a mill owner's family, the McAdams, where Richard the father/husband takes pride in how he runs his operation, and how he treats his workers (and they do have better accommodations and he's installed electricity and running water in the mill homes where they live). His wife, Katherine, befriends Ella, while Ella can't understand how this rich lady would care at all for such as her. There's a character named Hampton Haywood, who works as a Pullman porter turned organizer, who provides a blistering inside look at what it meant to be a black man in 1929 in the South, along with a host of others.

      Cash's prose is gorgeous, and some sentences I would go back and re-read. It's like when you first taste something that is so good, you want to keep eating. Reading his work is like that, and spoonful after spoonful, you never feel like you're full enough, which is why I can't wait for his next book, WHEN GHOSTS COME HOME, release date, September 21, 2021.
    • 2/5
      historic fiction (1929 murder/union-organizing and -busting near Appalachian mountains, North Carolina based on the true story of Ella May Wiggins). I got to page 125 or so; for a murder story this one lacks suspense/interest--I guess I was hoping this would be a little more plot-driven? The characters were complicated and layered, and it is fairly atmospheric as historic novels go, but the skipping from POV to POV was tiresome after a while and I just didn't care to continue reading.
      I've heard some people liked Cash's previous books but less so this one, so it may be worth checking out his other novels instead.
    • 4/5
      This well-written but ultimately depressing novel is based on true events from the battle to unionize North Carolina textile mill workers in 1929. The book’s main character, Ella May Wiggins, is a young woman with four children to feed and an absent husband. She goes to work in a major textile mill where cotton is processed and spun for weaving, working a 70-hour week for $9. She bangs heads with management when she misses a shift to care for one of her children, who is desperately ill with whooping cough – a disease which had earlier taken one of her babies. The young woman, whose life up to that point had consisted of desperate poverty, grinding labor, and deprivation, is attracted to the burgeoning labor movement, led in Gastonia by Communist party organizers from the North. At first only curious, she is swept into becoming a figurehead of the movement, and ultimately is at its center when a major strike erupts into violence.Cash creates a number of characters for the book, some based on historical figures, some fictional. His sympathies are largely with Wiggins. He doesn’t refrain from acknowledging that she was used by some of the organizers who saw a sympathetic figurehead just at the time they needed one to get the planned strikes off the ground. In addition, Wiggins lived and worked with African-Americans in one of the only integrated work forces in the region. It’s this association and drive for integration of the union that ultimately drives a wedge into the striking laborers and provides the mill owners with a powerful weapon.Written in 2017, there are eerie echoes (or foreshadowings) within the rhetoric of both sides. We heard many of these same terms bandied about during 2020’s Black Lives Matter movement. It’s unclear whether the facsimile newspaper pages in the book are Cash’s creations or genuine reproductions, but the anger, the hysteria, the false accusations, and the genuine fear of loss expressed in them could have been printed in any conservative American newspaper (or, more likely, in the Twitterverse) nearly a century after the Gastonia riots. They are rife with accusations of “fake news” and “outside agitators”, and include exhortations to “proud Americans’’ to “stand with us tomorrow and help us put down any insurrection that seeks to overthrow our government and alter our way of life”. In all caps, yet.Apparently, we haven’t learned much.Cash uses flashbacks, framing devices, and shifting points of view to unspool his story, so if you don’t want to know on page 48 what happens to Ella on page 360, this may not be the book for you. He also depends heavily on coincidence with some characters weaving their way in and out of the story and appearing just in time for maximum emotional impact.Minor quibbles aside, this novel throws light on historical events that have largely been ignored or forgotten, and is well worth a read. Just don’t expect to come away from it with a happy heart.
    • 4/5
      4.5 stars.

      Rich with historical details and based on real life events, The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash shines a much needed light on the  National Textile Workers Union attempt to secure better wages and working conditions for textile workers in the south.

      In 1929, single mother Ella May Wiggins works twelve hours a day, six days a week at American Mill No. 2. Although she relies on the kindness of her neighbors in Stumpton to help watch over her four children while she is working, her $9 a week paycheck barely covers rent and food for her and her family. After attending a union rally in nearby Gastonia where workers at the Loray Mill are being evicted from their homes after going on strike, Ella becomes an unlikely spokeswoman for the union when she wins over the crowd with her moving life story and recently penned ballad, The Mill Mother’s Lament.  Over the next several months, Ella and union organizer Sophia Blevin continue their efforts to integrate Ella's African-American neighbors and co-workers into the National Textile Workers Union. In the deeply segregated South where minorities and women have no voice or rights, Ella's work with the union is dangerous and her attempts to include African-Americans in the fight for better wages culminates in heartbreak.

      Growing up in poverty in the NC mountains,  Ella marries young and follows her husband, John, from one mill town to another. After the death of their young son, John abandons her and their children and Ella cannot find work anywhere except American Mill No. 2 where whites and African Americans work alongside one another. After coming close to losing her job when she stays home to care for her sick baby, Ella is drawn to the union rally in hopes of improving pay and working conditions for herself and her fellow workers. She is pragmatic and deals with every hardship that comes her way with stoicism yet Ella's love for her children is fierce.

      While Ella is the central figure in the unfolding story, the chapters alternate between various points of view.  Daughter Lilly's perspective takes place in the present as she shares memories of those long ago days with her nephew, Edwin.  Verchel Park's acquaintance with Ella's former husband John has unintended consequences that he only realizes long after their occurrence. The wife of a wealthy mill owner from a neighboring town, Katherine McAdam is drawn to Ella through a shared loss and their unlikely friendship proves to be life saving. African-American train porter Hampton Haywood's family fled Mississippi in fear for their lives and although he now lives in New York, he cannot resist the call to help the union organizers in the South.  Disgraced police officer Albert Roach is instrumental in setting in motion the final confrontation that ends with a devastating loss.

      The Last Ballad is a meticulously researched novel with a thought-provoking and poignant storyline. Based on factual events,  Wiley Cash brings the characters, setting and time period in this compelling story vibrantly to life.  Ella May Wiggins' struggles to provide for her family are positively gut wrenching and her impressive efforts to improve working conditions and higher wages are captivating.  I absolutely loved and highly recommend this extraordinary novel that highlights a mostly forgotten yet vastly important time in the history of the labor movement.
    • 4/5
      This book is a fictionalized account of the 1929 Loray Mill Stike in Gastonia, North Carolina that resulted in bloodshed and the death of Ella May Wiggins a Union organizer. Cash uses different voices to tell the story from Ella May's herself to Lily Wiggins her daughter, to Vershel Park, who knew her in South Carolina when she worked at a mill there, to Brother a man who lived with the monks who helped the strikers, to Claire McAdam who met her in Washington D.C. while being escorted around by a Senator from North Carolina, to Richard McAdam her father a mill owner who worries about the strikers making a bad impression on his daughter's future in-laws who are visiting, to Katherine McAdam, wife of Richard, who makes friends with Ella, to Hampton Haywood, a black Union man from up North who has come down South to organize the blacks into the Union with Ella's help, to Albert Roach, a cop on suspension for bad behavior who doesn't know when to quit.Ella has four kids and a fifth one has died because she wasn't there to take care of it or had the money to get him proper medicine or a visit to the doctor. When the Union comes to Gaston County to Gastonia to help with the Loray Mill strike they are encouraging the other mills to strike by getting employees to join the Union. Ella, a singer, had written a song about working in the mill and the Union people asked her to speak before the crowd about her story and to sing her song. When she does she immediately becomes famous as "the singer".Ella wants to organize the blacks into the Union as does Sophia, the Northerner who recruited her into the Union wants to do. But the Union leader at the site, Richard Beal believes that they should wait until they get their demands met for the whites first before they bring in the blacks. Sophia wants to bring in a black Union man from up North to help Ella organize the blacks. Meanwhile, she is helping with the Loray strike and with the Union in general by going to D.C. to talk to the North Carolina Senator about their plight.This book is written in an interesting way as it's told from many different vantage points. You wind up with different viewpoints and ideas about what happened and why and who was to blame. You also get the viewpoint of a mill owner who runs a good mill and treats his mill workers fairly but finds himself tempted to join in with the bad mill owners in doing bad things because he is against the strikes because they make his town look bad. It also shows the viewpoints of his wife and daughter who are against his viewpoints because they sympathize with Ella. But you also see the viewpoint of Albert Roach one of the instigators and "bad guys" of the story and what motivated him. This can be jarring a bit and honestly, I wanted to read a book about Ella May and wound up with one about the South at this point of time. This book is very well written and takes a fascinating look at something that happened in history that was quickly hushed up as the author himself is from Gastonia and had never heard of it until he went to grad school in Louisiana. I'm glad the author chose to shed some light on this brave female who fought for others and died tragically in the process. I give this book four out of five stars.QuotesWhich of us is not forever a stranger and alone.-Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel)She’d decided that giving birth to a child is nothing but an invitation to losing it, and that was what she feared each time she’d heard the first newborn cry of one her children.-Wiley Cash (The Last Ballad p 122)“You’re young, hungry, smart. Don’t ruin it. Don’t encourage your brothers to ruin it.” “What are you saying?” Haywood asked. “I’m suggesting that you stick with whom and what you know.” “You’re telling me not to mix with white people,” Haywood said. “Not the ones who will get you killed. And, Mr. Haywood, there are many kinds of death.”-Wiley Cash (The Last Ballad p 261)There is an old saying that every story, even your own, is either happy or sad depending of where you stop telling it. I believe I’ll stop telling this one here.-Wiley Cash (The Last Ballad p 370)
    • 3/5
      The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash displayed a world that I had never noticed. The story centers in the rural area of Gaston County North Carolina around the mills and the people working in the mills. Ella May Wiggins works six days a week for a total of 72 hours at a job where she walks 2 miles to reach and only receives $9.00 for the whole week. With this pittance, she must support her growing family while living in a shack with three children in the black side of town. Wiley Cash pounds out a novel of hardship and misery, but Ella May stands as a beacon of determination in hopes of changing conditions for the mill workers as labor unions attempt to enter the picture. Wiley Cash portrays the characters and setting with dimension and not the flatness of a textbook. Ella May and her friends display boldness and humor. The Last Ballad stands as a glimpse into conditions in the 1920’s that still exist in the 21st Century.
    • 4/5
      The Last Ballad, Wiley CashWiley Cash has a way with words. He develops the characters so well that the reader walks alongside them as the book unfolds. living their experiences with them. This story has its base in the life of a real character, Ella May Wiggins, and coincidentally, Wiley Cash has relatives with the name, Wiggins, although they do not seem to be related.This is the story of the very short and sad life of Ella May Wiggins. Once a hillbilly, she moved with her husband John to North Carolina to work in the mills. She lived in Stumptown, a small black community in which she was the only white resident. She, like them, was dirt poor. Her life has not been easy. Her husband walked out on her and she had recently thrown out the no account man who was also the father of the child growing in her belly. She was taking care of all her children by herself. The four of them walked barefoot and were often hungry. They looked after each other while she was at work at the local textile mill.It is 1929 and Ella May worked at American Mill #2, owned and run by the Goldberg brothers. It was one of the few mills that was integrated. She was paid a paltry sum which barely put food on the table. When she was reprimanded for missing work because of a sick child, she decided to check out the textile worker’s union that was being organized by the Communist Party. Ella May lived from hand to mouth and was slowly growing desperate. At the union rally, encouraged by its organizers, she unexpectedly found herself singing her own songs and addressing the crowd. She was persuaded to join them in their effort to organize workers and to eventually take on a leadership role. She was also persuaded to try to integrate the union by encouraging her friends and neighbors to join her. It turned out to be a very dangerous endeavor. The world was not only anti-union and opposed to Communists, but integration of the unions was even more of a far-fetched effort.The textile workers were engaged in a poorly organized strike when she became involved. It had not been very effective. She became the face and inspiration of the movement. At first there was very little violence, but as time passed, racism and anti-Communist sentiments aroused more violent passions.The story of Ella May’s participation in the labor union struggle was related to her grandson Edwin by her daughter Lilly. It was the first time she was telling the whole story, about her mother’s brief life, to anyone at all. She was deep into her 80’s at the time she related this history to him. She had decided not to let the story of her mother’s heroism be forgotten. Each of the novel’s chapters featured a different character. Each described the relationship of that character to Ella May and her struggles. I found the novel inspiring and informative. I had not known that the Communist Party was involved in our labor union struggles and movement. Actually, my experience with unions was quite negative for two reasons. One was that the striking workers forced my father out of his small business. He lost everything. Two was that I objected to the unionization of teachers, and I still do. Somehow it made me and them less professional and more demanding, not always for the benefit of the children or for the improvement of the schools, but more for the benefit of themselves. A combination of all ideals would have been more preferable, but sometimes the better goals are lost in the shuffle. Still, the story makes the reader realize that unions were not only justified at one time, they were needed to level the playing field and provide better working conditions for all. The novel makes the reader very sympathetic to the plight of the overworked and abused employees, especially those of color who were not given any equality or respect. They were often humiliated by cruel white people, who felt superior to them, and today they still are in some places and in some circumstances. The danger, however, to me, is that the unions are subject to abuse because sometimes the members forget the purpose of the union, which is to improve conditions, and not necessarily to destroy a business, which is sometimes the ultimate end product when collective bargaining breaks down. A case in point is Stella D’oro.
    • 4/5
      The Last Ballad🍒🍒🍒🍒
      By Wiley Cash
      2017
      William Morrow

      The courage and heart of Ella Mae Wiggins, her insight and belief that all Mill workers deserve equal and fair pay and working conditions, free from discrimination is based on actual events of 1929, in North Carolina. Her heroic efforts inspired many to demand change and opportunity.
      The fight for justice, the honest and hard working life during this time of devastation and social change are moving and vivid. The desperation is felt. The slow pace of the book at first bothered me, but quickly became obvious and essential. This style helped make the book wonderful.
    • 4/5
      Wiley Cash has the story-telling gift. This novel is based on historical incidents in the early 20th century, as union organizers attempted to bring better wages and working conditions to the textile mills of Appalachia. Varying points of view add perspective and tension to the tale; although we learn early on that the first character we meet, Ella Mae Wiggins, will risk everything to try to improve her family's lot by joining the union, and that she will be murdered eventually because of her actions, that foreknowledge takes nothing away from her story, bits of which we learn through the eyes of other unforgettable characters. A page-turner; highly recommended.November 2017
    • 3/5
      THE LAST BALLAD is historical fiction about a poor female textile mill worker who one day in the 1920s walked off the job and joined the National Textile Workers Union. It is also about a certain one of their strikes in 1929 in North Carolina. The ex-mill worker was Ella May Wiggins, and that particular strike was the Loray Mill strike. These we know to be true because Wiley Cash says so in this “Afterword.”Historical fiction always has some truth to it. That’s what makes it so appealing. But what about THE LAST BALLAD is true other than what Cash writes in his “Afterword”? I wanted to believe, especially, in Richard McAdam, the enlightened but weak mill owner, and Hampton Haywood, the black Communist from the North. So I did some research, and it looks like these and the other characters in the book just aid the story and are straight from Cash’s imagination.Not only does Cash write well enough to make the reader want to believe his fiction; he also tells a balanced story. That is, for example, Ella is dirt poor, barely able to feed her children, but well-off Katherine McAdams wants to and does help her. Cash also shows both the good and bad characters in the police department and among the strikers.This is an interesting story of a little-known part of American history. It is not a happy book, though.I won this book through the JATHAN & HEATHER website.
    • 5/5
      I again tackle an historical novel with it’s roots in the US. I am trying to read more about the past of this country – the good and the bad. In the course of the historical record, the period covered by The Last Ballad happened about an eye blink ago. Considering the path of the United States and its progress, it happened eons ago. Although I fear given the current state of workers’ rights in this country that some of the progress made as a result of the people who fought for the unions is being lost and American labor rights are being eroded.Ella May Wiggens is living a very hard life in a mixed race community in North Carolina. She works in one of the mills – long hours, six days a week and she makes $9 for her efforts. She has made some bad choices when it comes to men and she has 5 children who rely on her. That $9 doesn’t stretch very far and when Ella May learns about a group promising better wages and working conditions she wants to know more about it so she uses her one day off to go to a union meeting. It’s there that the course of her life changes.Ella May goes to work for the union. Along the way she makes some new friends – some are very surprising. Other friendships are strengthened as she pushes the union to include her friends at the mill. They are reluctant because they are Negro and while the union is all in favor of their membership they don’t think it’s the time yet in North Carolina.The book also explores the lives of the people on the other side of the tracks – the mill owners but this is Ella May’s story and it’s a powerful tale. A trailblazing woman from history who was basically lost until this book brought her back to life.I will admit that it took me a little while to get into this book. Mr. Cash’s writing style for Ella May was rooted in her era so the rhythm of the book required a bit of adjustment. Once I did I found myself immersed in her world. It was quite often, a very unpleasant world to inhabit as you can imagine. Ella May lived in what only kindly could be called a shack with her five children and the men in her life were less than reliable. It’s a shame because she was a driven, talented and intelligent woman – far ahead of her time.The issues in this book are part of the building blocks of this country. The ordinary people who were lost in these fights are often forgotten so it’s wonderful to see someone like Ella May brought back to life in an engrossing book like this. I will note that the book has piqued my interest in learning more about the start of the labor movement in the country. I must admit that at times in my reading I was quite angry and horrified at working conditions for the people in the mill and the attitude of “management.” And trust me – my father was a man known for his distaste of unions. But in learning more about how and why they began I fully understand their need. And as noted above I fear things are going backwards in regards to worker protections so all of the work of the people like Ella May may be in vain.The Last Ballad was a book that stayed with me and it will stay on my bookshelf for I think it is one I will want to read again. There is much to find in this tale of one simple woman trying to better herself for the sake of her children. It’s everyone’s story in a way.
    • 3/5
      I have read other Wiley Cash books and thoroughly enjoyed them. I have heard him speak and even had dinner with him at a literary event. He writes beautifully and is clearly invested in the forgotten or hidden stories he tells of his native South. The Last Ballad, based on a true story, is a novel that he obviously holds close to his heart. Ironically though, despite his closeness to the subject matter, it is the least successful of his novels for me.It's 1929 and Ella May Wiggins is a single mother of five children (four living) who works in a textile mill in Bessemer City, NC. She earns $9 a week, which isn't really enough to feed and clothe herself and her children. Her alcoholic ex-husband up and left before her last baby was born and the man she's with now (and pregnant by) is almost as no-account as her disappeared husband. Ella May lives in Stumptown, in the Negro part of town, despite the fact that she and her children are white. The Wiggins family, like their black neighbors, live in grinding, desperate poverty. When Ella May is reprimanded for missing work to care for her very ill child, she decides that she will attend a meeting to see what unionization could mean to her and to her children. Despite her fear of losing her job and the only income she has, she agrees to join the movement. After singing a heart-rending ballad she's written about the mills and motherhood, she quickly becomes the local face for the union, trading her mill job for one within the union organization. But the local mill owners are not about to allow these communist unions into their mills without a fight, a truly horrible and violent fight if required. Ella May, being so publicly recognizable will be square in the cross hairs of those determined to keep the unions out no matter what.Mostly set in 1929 with two short portions in 2005, the novel is told from various characters' points of view. The multiplicity of characters, from Ella May to her daughter, from the wealthy wife of a mill owner to a violent sheriff's deputy, from a black activist to a broken man haunted by his past, and many more, shows the events of the novel from many different perspectives, highlighting the way that so many different people converged on Gaston County. This same multiplicity made it hard to follow the story as it switched from one person to another to another, sometimes quite far from the main plot thread. Eventually the threads all converged but until that point, the narrative structure gave it a choppy feel. While the history here is incredibly important to the story, it often drove the novel to the exclusion of the human story. History has covered the general story of unions and the conditions that led to them pretty thoroughly but the story of Ella May herself has faded into obscurity. Unfortunately, Ella May didn't quite come to life here either, portrayed as she was first as an unthinking pawn of the union and later as a martyr to their cause rather than the complete person she must have been. Her personal story, the things that made her more than just the singer, are sometimes told, not shown, in the novel but are almost never fully explored, lessening the emotional impact of this woman's life and her struggle. It must have taken heaps of courage to stand up for her children and herself, as well as for her black neighbors, who were not being welcomed into the union fold, but somehow this courage is only viewed at a far remove and not close and viscerally for the reader. I think perhaps the message overwhelmed the story here, which is a shame because there's quite a story to be told and usually Cash has the chops to pull it off. The writing itself is well done despite the stumbling block of the structure and the story is an important one, if incredibly bleak. Readers who like their fiction to confront injustice will still want to read this even if the emotional punch isn't quite there.
    • 3/5
      The Last Ballad is the true story of Ella May Wiggins, a young mother of 5 children, who worked in the textile mill in 1929 and became the voice of the union struggle for workers’ rights. Ella only earned $9 a week working nights at the mill, unable to stay home to care for her ill children. Her husband ran off, and she lived as a single parent in Stumptown, depending on the help of her poor neighbors to care for her children while she worked grueling hours at the mill.

      Cash’s story of Wiggins and her involvement with the formation of the union is a fascinating, often-ignored piece of history. The book uses multiple perspectives, which is a useful technique to show the determination of the grassroots efforts of the labor movement and why unions were the only answer for many people with no other options. This book is important and Ella’s story needs to be told; however, it’s over-researched, and Cash often drifted into tangents of historical information or recitation of timelines that pulled me out of the story. Also, the outcome is revealed early in the book, which deflated the powerful ending.

      The Last Ballad is good, but not great. I knew what was coming, since Cash told me from the beginning, so most of the story was just watching the events unfold. The ending was gentle and heartbreaking, which almost redeemed the slow middle.

      I really enjoyed another novel of Cash’s, A Land More Kind Than Home, so although The Last Ballad fell flat for me, I still look forward to his subsequent books.
      Many thanks to Edelweiss and William Morrow for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.
    • 3/5
      Well written story of Ella Mae Wiggins and her death at the Loray Mill Strike in 1929. I had a hard time keeping involved with it at times as I wasn't that interested in the work done by the union...but the home life & working conditions that these people suffered and the strength that must have took was very thought provoking and inspiring
    • 5/5
      Based on areal person, this novel takes the reader back to the 1920’s rural North Carolina where the poor are basically “owned” by the fabric mills. There’s no hope, only a bleak future. Ella May, a mill employee becomes convinced the only way out is to align with the Unions. Bleakness plus hope underlie the entire novel and create a picture of a strong-willed woman willing to fight for her future and those around her.
    • 5/5
      The Last Ballad describes the struggles of both labor organization and racial integration in North Carolina fiber mills during the early 20th century. Wiley Cash tells the story of Ella May Wiggins, a white worker turned activist who ultimately lost her life while working for the cause. Ella May was a single mother living in poverty, doing her best to feed her family. She believed in the union cause, but perhaps more importantly, they paid her a better wage as a union organizer than she could earn in the mills, and it provided her a way to try to improve working conditions for both black and white workers.I loved the structure of this book. There are several narrators, each with their own personal history. Their individual threads advance Ella May’s story, and sometimes intersect with one another as well. Ella May’s daughter Lilly’s thread is set in 2005, providing both prologue and epilogue for the book. Cash’s afterword, where he discusses the history behind this book and his personal interest and connection to it, was also very interesting. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      In 1929 working in the mills in North Carolina a young mother, Ella May Wiggins, must feed her family on $9 a week for 72 hours After seeing a circular talking about the unions and how much more money she could make and better conditions she decides to join and thus her story is told. A true story and a wonderful historical novel, one of the best of 2017. Women were strong back in those days....they are still strong now.
    • 4/5
      The setting is 1929 and times are hard for everyone. Ella May feels the pressure to keep her job in the mill. I don’t think her boss thinks very highly of her. When one of my children were sick, I stayed home from work. Ella May gets in trouble when she stays home with a sick child . I thought her boss was heartless and I wanted to smack him.The book is based on actual events and the author does a good job of showing how hard it was to work in a mill as a woman. The hours were long and the pay was not nearly enough. What happens when the union comes to the mill? The owners don’t take kindly to someone trying to rile their workers up. The danger is well depicted in the story as anger spreads throughout the mill. Ella May is a strong woman, but can she stand up for what is right without getting hurt? The other characters brought much understanding of how labor laws can make workers and employers go up against each other. I loved the story and how much turmoil happens when lines are crossed in disputes in the workplace. I received an advanced copy of this book from Good Reads early readers programs. The review is my own opinion.READING PROGRESS
    • 4/5
      Wiley Cash description of Ella May looking at her hands will inspire many of us for a long time, as will the many bird images.Yes, The Last Ballad warrants the full 4 Stars; yet, unlike the previous reviewers, I experienced a couple of let downs.First, the introduction of characters Arthur and Tom and their whole boring awful episodes really slowed down the plot;so much that Ella's murder felt like a distant afterthought. Verchel and his little chair did not add to the plot.Next, the deepest character insights belonged to Richard McAdam, rather than to main characters Ella May and Hampton.Violet remained oddly understated and it was strange that neither she nor Hampton enlightened Ella May on the horrificfates of previous African Americans who had tried to unionize in the South. That knowledge could have deterred Ellafrom leading them into the confrontation that Beal had so accurately predicted and tried so hard to avoid.While the voice of Ella May as Mill Mother is singularly well done, it still does not realistically explain why, having been deserted by one husband and being unable to support her three kids without food from Violet's mother, she would take a chance on gettingpregnant with an obvious drifter. She knows that the loss of her tiny income would probably end this precarious family if shehad to take time to deliver and care for a baby. Yet, she goes ahead, then fairly drives the new man away by tossing his precious guitar.Claire and Donna add more distractions.And, it still seems odd that, on page 5, it states that John had left 2 years ago, then, on page 22, it says that it had been 5 years.
    • 4/5
      “There is an old saying that every story, even your own, is either happy or sad depending on where you stop telling it. I believe I'll stop telling this one here.” In 1929, Ella Mae Wiggins was working in a textile plant, in the Appalachia foothills of North Carolina. Wages were grim and the working conditions were grueling, as they workers toiled in 60-70 hour work weeks. She could barely feed her children. When a union organization arrives from up north, they are able to recruit Ella, to join the cause. She becomes a beacon of hope and she also becomes a deadly target for the mill owners, the KKK and the authorities.I had not heard of Ms. Wiggins but thanks to Mr. Cash's latest novel, he has enlightened me on this unsung and courageous young woman. The story-telling and research that went into this book, is truly inspiring and Cash has proven, once again, that he is one of our most reliable southern authors, working today. Seek it out!
    • 4/5
      I have read and enjoyed Wiley Cash'e other two books, A Land More Kind Than Home, and This Dark Road to Mercy. This story was a real eye opener for me. It takes place small town in North Carolina, in 1929. Based on true events, it is a shocking revelation to read about the dreadful treatment of people the Southern USA. Ella May is our main protagonist, and she is a woman in her twenties, working 12 hours shifts, 6 days a week at a cotton mill factory. She lives in shack with her four children, as her husband has long left her . Being a more progressive or practical sort of a person, she lives next door to African American people , who are treated even worse than folks like Ella May. This is the story of the beginning of unions in the USA, or as people saw it at that time, the onset of a Communist Menace. I really was shocked by the way life was - and probably still is in parts of the USA.The one weakness that I felt the story had was that it was told from perhaps too many points of view. At times that made the story seem a bit hard to follow. Overall, a very important read.4 stars and recommended.
    • 4/5
      The Last Ballad tells the story of workers in textile mills in the South in the late 1920s. Ella May is raising four children alone. She's got work, but her 72-hour work week pays less than enough to even feed them everyday. Her youngest is ill and when she stays home to care for him she'd told that if she misses another shift, she'll be fired. So when news comes that unionizers are to come to nearby Gastonia she's desperate enough to hope. Told from several viewpoints, from the wife of a mill owner to a black union organizer terrified to be back in the South, Cash tells the story of one brave and desperate woman and also of the textile mills of the piedmont region of the Carolinas. It's fascinating stuff, and Cash clearly spent years in immersive research.
    • 4/5
      ( I hope to eventually receive a delayed Early Reviewers copy of this novel; I was able to check it out of the public library for now.) Wiley Cash has written this historical novel based on life and death of Ella May Wiggins. The real Ella was born in Tennessee in 1900 and was murdered at the age of 29 during her work with mill strikers. She lived a terribly difficult life and she lost 4 of her 9 children to whooping cough and pellegra. Poverty stricken, she was only paid $9 for a 72-hour work week in a South Carolina mill. She ended up joining a labor union and became a worker's rights advocate and civil rights leader, working to integrate the union with African American neighbors and co-workers. She was also a folk song writer and literally became a voice for organized labor. It's wonderful that Wiley Cash has brought this lost story to life. It's a fitting tribute to this remarkable woman.
    • 5/5
      The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash tells the story of Ella May Wiggins, a single mother of four, who challenges the status quo by joining a burgeoning Labor movement in the mill towns of Appalachia. Ella May is so colorful, brave, and heroic (and her working conditions so awful) that it is easy to imagine Mr. Cash conjuring her up for a fairy tale, but in fact she was a real person, and this novel is based on actual events in 1929. Ella is not perfect, especially by the standards set for a woman in the 1920’s. Chapters alternate between Ella’s story and letters written by her daughter, Lilly, to pass on the family’s history to a beloved nephew. From history class, I knew that things did not end well for coal miners and mill workers in the early days of the labor movement in the USA, especially when the Pinkerton agents were called in, but reading a story can make you understand something in a way no mere recounting of facts can. In today’s divisive political climate, with tensions glaring between races, sexes, and social classes, an understanding of our history is more important than ever. I highly recommend this book!
    • 4/5
      The biggest problem with novels based on actual events is those pesky spoilers. Seriously, how many people who watched the movie Titanic didn’t know at the outset that that ship was going to sink? Sometimes, though, it is necessary to put a human face on events that shape the world we live in. If Jack hadn’t sacrificed himself and died of hypothermia to save the woman he loved, how could we possibly come to care about a hunk of steel plummeting to the ocean floor?So it is with the early days of the American labor movement. We learned in school how those who worked for long hours under hellish conditions for starvation wages took a stand against rich factory owners who had the resources to buy not only armies of hired muscle and Pinkertons but the very government and military itself to maintain control of their mines and factories. But it can never become personal until we read first-hand the stories of Orville Frank Aderholt, a police chief who strove to maintain order in chaos but ended up dead in a shoot-out, or Ella May Wiggins, folksinger and labor organizer who was murdered by a mob of strike breakers. And few authors are better suited to resurrect the voices than Wiley Cash, a native son of North Carolina and master of southern literature. Although both sides painted different pictures of Ella May Wiggins, some things are known. Like many Appalachian hill people, she was lured away from the mountains to a life in the factories with promises of good jobs by company recruiters hired to bring in lots of cheap labor to run their mills. Her job at American Mill in Bessemer City, North Carolina, wasn’t enough to provide adequate food and shelter for her and her four children so she found the rhetoric of the labor unions. Like many hill people, Ella May had a close connection with folk music and used it to tell her story and union rallies. It is unsettling to read how closely connected the unions were to the Communist party at this time in our history but the reality is that the party was one of the most outspoken advocate for the abolition of Jim Crow laws, an end to lynching, equal access to education, interracial marriage, and the rights of workers to demand fair wages and safe working conditions. I suspect that the animosity Americans have towards communism today stems more from the propaganda spread by the captains of industry who needed to win the war for popular opinion and couldn’t do it by preaching that living wages are bad. Another problem that authors experience when writing novels about actual events is that those actual events don’t always end in a way that one would wish them to, but Cash reminds us of the old adage that ‘every story, even your own, is either happy or sad depending on where you stop telling it.” Not all author know when to end a story, but Wiley Cash does. *Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending. *1 Star – The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.
    • 3/5
      If her job in the textile mills does not kill her, poor living conditions will. Her husband left without knowing there was another child on the way. Ella May lends her voice to the cause when the union organizer came to town. Becoming recognizable is never a good thing when those with the money, power, and privileges do not want to share. The author does a good job describing the inequalities and violence of the period. Superficial treatment of some characters distracted from the story upsetting the pace. The ending showed drastic changes to the family but show little if any change to the working conditions. I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. Although encouraged, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.