The last ballad
(Pre-loaded Audio)

Title from Playaway label.

Originally released by Harper Audio ℗2017

Release date supplied by publisher.

Issued on Playaway, a dedicated audio media player.

One set of earphones and one AAA battery required for listening.

Performed by Karen White.

"Six days a week, Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the twelve-hour night shift at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City, North Carolina. Her husband has run off again, and she must keep her four children alive with whatever she can find. It's 1929, and the insular community expects the mill's owners to pay the workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May's best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars a week, it's the only opportunity she has. When union leaflets begin circulating, Ella May has a rare taste of hope, a yearning for the better life the organizers promise. But the mill owners claim the union is a front for the communist menace sweeping across Europe, and they will resort to bloodshed to prevent workers from banding together. On the night of an important rally, Ella May, weighing the costs of her long hours and the empty bellies of her children, makes up her mind to join the movement -- a decision that will have lasting consequences for 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."--,Provided by publisher.

PLAYAWAY