Holding the Line

Holding the Line, Barbara Kingsolver's first non-fiction book, is the story of women's lives transformed by an a signal event. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, it is part oral history and part social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment which occurs when people work together as a community. Like Kingsolver's award-winning novels, Holding the Line is a beautifully written book grounded on the strength of its characters.Hundreds of families held the line in the 1983 strike against Phelps Dodge Copper in Arizona. After more than a year the strikers lost their union certification, but the battle permanently altered the social order in these small, predominantly Hispanic mining towns. At the time the strike began, many women said they couldn't leave the house without their husband's permission. Yet, when injunctions barred union men from picketing, their wives and daughters turned out for the daily picket lines. When the strike dragged on and men left to seek jobs elsewhere, women continued to picket, organize support, and defend their rights even when the towns were occupied by the National Guard. "Nothing can ever be the same as it was before," said Diane McCormick of the Morenci Miners Women's Auxiliary. "Look at us. At the beginning of this strike, we were just a bunch of ladies."

AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW From the multi-million copy bestselling author Demon Copperhead : a true story of female-led resilience during the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 - now available for the first time in the UK. ''[Kingsolver] means to save us by telling us stories . . . She comes closer than anyone else I know.'' ANNE PATCHETT ''Clear and emotional . . . This is a report from the trenches of where the political meets the personal.'' JOHN SAYLES It was the summer of 1983. Barbara Kingsolver had a day job as a scientific writer spends her weekends cutting her teeth as a freelance journalist when she landed an assignment. Her mission: was to cover the Phelps Dodge mine strike. Over the year that followed Kingsolver stood with those miners and their families, increasingly engaged and heartbroken. She recorded stories of striking miners and their stunningly courageous wives, sisters and daughters. She saw rights she''d taken for granted denied to people she had learned to care about, as they cried out to a wide world that either refused to believe what was happening to them, or didn''t care, or simply could not know. This book is the true story of the families who held the line, and of Kingsolver''s commitment to tell the story of the women and girls who discovered themselves in their fight to keep their families from destitution. It is a story about the sparks that fly when the flint of force strikes against human mettle. FROM THE WINNER OF THE PULITZER AND WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023

Vorwort
The debut work by bestselling author of Demon Copperhead: a true story of female-led resilience during the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 - now available for the first time in the UK.

Autorentext
Barbara Kingsolver is the global prize-winning and bestselling author of novels including Unsheltered, Flight Behaviour, The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible and Demon Copperhead, as well as books of poetry, essays and creative non-fiction. Her work of narrative non-fiction is the influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver's work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction and is the first author to win the Women's Prize twice. Barbara lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.

Klappentext

From the multi-million copy bestselling author of Demon Copperhead: a true story of female-led resilience during the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 - now available for the first time in the UK. '[Kingsolver] means to save us by telling us stories .