Review: The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash

Title: The Last Ballad
Author: Wiley Cash
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: October 3, 2017
Edition: ebook (384 pages)
Genres:

• Fiction
• Historical Fiction

The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


North Carolina, in 1929, is the setting for this book. Ella May Wiggins is a textile mill worker at an integrated mill. She is poor, hard working, and the mother of four young children. She joins the union and becomes a strike leader when mill employees strike for higher wages and better working conditions.

Though this book is historical fiction, it is based on the life of Ella May Wiggins, a real woman who gave her life for the union cause when she was murdered in 1929. The characters reached out from the pages and became real to me. The bleakness of life, the discrimination and the abject poverty they endured makes me realize how blessed I am to come after them. They paved the way for where I am today--a person with a disability who had educational and employment opportunities that so many did not, then, and still do not have now. This book pays tribute to labor leaders and civil rights leaders who sacrificed so much, even their lives, for positive change. Wiley Cash has beautifully written and preserved one of these stories. Let us never forget. And let us never go backward, only forward.