The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash

Some books take a while to get into, but this one had me gripped right from the start. This is a true story based on the Loray Mill Strike in a North Carolina mill in 1929. The mill workers were barely earning enough to keep their families alive, and without a strike, nothing was ever going to change.

The book follows one of the mill workers, Ella May Wiggins, who has no choice but to leave her children alone at night as she goes out to the mill to put in her 14 hour shift. Her useless husband has left her to cope on her own, and things don't get much better when she finds another man who can't hold down a job.

Ella is a poor white woman from the mountains, and she is living in a shack where all her neighbours are all black, and this is unusual during the time of racial segregation but she sees all the mill workers as equal in their struggle to get by. One day she finds a leaflet advertising a union rally for the workers that is taking place in the next town and she feels a need to go and hear what they have to say. Most people are wary of getting involved with such a thing as the strikes attract trouble, and anyone joining the union will almost certainly lose their job.

Ella is a brave woman who is prepared to fight the mill owners for better pay and conditions in the mills, but there is a great deal of public opposition as the unions are affiliated to the communist party. The local authorities see them all as trouble makers and Bolsheviks and do everything they can to shut down the rallies.

The author, Wiley Cash, tells the story through the eyes of a number of people affected by the strikes, and gradually the different viewpoints build together to show how events unfolded. The town of Gastonia where Ella May Wiggins lived, is Cash's hometown but while he was growing up he never heard anything about it as the history seemed to have been erased. This is a story that should be told and it will help raise awareness of the bravery of people like Ella May Wiggins who helped to improve the lives of everyone who worked in the mills.

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