Wiley Cash

I can't believe that I hadn't read this book yet. It's been moved to two houses in three years, but I always knew where it was. So, I finally pulled it down and read it. I knew it would break my heart, as his books tend to do, but it was amazing. This book is about the early days of the labor unions trying to unionize the mills in NC in 1929. Ella May Wiggins works six days a week, twelve-hour shifts for $9.00 a week which has to feed, house and feed her four children. In the author's notes, you will find out that she was a relative of Wiley Cash. One that was generations ahead of her time, but was also written out of the local NC history until Cash enrolled in graduate school on Louisiana in 2003.… (plus d'informations)

Cash is such a good storyteller that even when he makes some mis-steps, I still enjoy the journey. In this novel, he tells the story of Ella May (a real person), a poor young woman from the mountains of Tennessee who finds herself leading efforts to organize an integrated labor union in North Carolina. In his Afterword, Cash notes the various connections he had to this little known piece of history but that he didn't learn about it until he was in graduate school. I admire Cash's desire to tell this story.

Much of the book is very good, but a few things didn't work for me. He includes a number of perspectives, so that the story is not just Ella's but also that of others involved. This works to good effect in some cases, but a couple of the perspectives were not full enough to move beyond the superfluous. He also, especially in the beginning, does a lot of "telling" and not enough "showing" about the mills and workers and their situation.

All in all, though, this was a good read.

4 stars… (plus d'informations)

Serviceable but undercooked suspense/thriller about a Southern town, a bag full of money stolen from a crime boss, kidnapped sisters, a psychopathic killer hunting them and their father down, and a tragic ex-cop looking for redemption. It's set in the South and is by a Southern writer, but it didn't feel particularly Southern. It's a thriller, but it wasn't particularly thrilling. It could have definitely been noir, but shied away, as if its editor thought it would be a more lucrative idea to aim this at the Oprah crowd, so let's not make this too hard and violent, mkay?

I love the idea of the confrontation building to a climax at Busch Stadium in St. Louis as McGwire and Sosa battle for the home run record as the season winds down, but the execution was disappointing. The protagonists are hardly settled into their seats before they get shown on the jumbotron, and before you know it psychopathic killer has stupidly attacked his target in the men's room and been apprehended and all danger is over. Seriously, he hunts him halfway across the country only to attack him in a jam packed baseball stadium as soon as he sees him? No stalking? No chase? No suspense! That could have been such a better scene; instead it felt nearly wasted.

He wasn't ever going to recover any stolen hillbilly mafia money that way. It is suggested that psychopathic killer had personal reasons at play, stemming from a minor league beaning incident that may have ended his playing career, but that angle needed considerably more exploration than it received.… (plus d'informations)