PositiveThe Washington Independent Review of BooksShe [Ella May Wiggins] touches the crowd with the tale of her life and a song she wrote about mothers toiling in the mills ... With Ella’s story at the core, Cash takes the reader into the lives of others who know Ella or intersect with her. He brings these characters to life, giving them their own conflicts and making them sympathetic even when they are weak (or worse) ...a fascinating slice of class and race in the early-20th-century South ... History aside, this novel stands on its own as a work of fiction. Some of the chapters on characters other than Ella might keep the reader’s attention away from the main story for too long, but Cash has made these characters interesting in their own right.
