Interview

Wiley Cash talks about his novels, A Land More Kind Than Home and The Last Ballad

A Conversation with Wiley Cash about The Last Ballad

The irony that the Loray Mill, where scenes in the book are set, is now home to luxury condos is not lost on you. Why is writing about the history of the mill so important to you now?

I grew up in Gastonia, North Carolina, completely unaware of the history of the mill. Firestone purchased the mill not long after the 1929 strike, which was one of the only communist led strikes in American history. It turned the city upside down, people died, and families were run out of town. But by the time I was born in 1977, Gastonia had completely buried the story of the Loray Mill strike. It wasn't until I went to grad school in 2003 that one of my professors learned that I was from Gastonia and mentioned the Loray Mill strike. I researched the name Loray Mill and was shocked to learn that the place I'd always known as the Firestone Plant was the epicenter of one of the most important moments in American history. It had all occurred in my hometown, and I had grown up knowing nothing about it. My parents, who were born in the 1940s and came of age under Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare, had also never heard of it. It made me realize that history is not a fixed thing, and it ...