In thisTimeTop 100 Book of the Year, the National Book Award finalist andNew York Timesbestselling author ofHeartlandanalyzes how Dolly Partons songsand successhave embodied feminism for working-class women (People).

Growing up amid Kansas wheat fields and airplane factories, Sarah Smarsh witnessed firsthand the particular vulnerabilitiesand strengthsof women in working poverty. Meanwhile, country songs by female artists played in the background, telling powerful stories about life, men, hard times, and surviving. In her family, she writes, country music was foremost a language among women. Its how we talked to each other in a place where feelings arent discussed. And no one provided that language better than Dolly Parton.

In this tribute to the woman who continues to demonstrate that feminism comes in coats of many colors, Smarsh tells readers how Partons songs have validated women who go unheard: the poor woman, the pregnant teenager, the struggling mother disparaged as trailer trash. Partons broader careerfrom singing on the front porch of her familys cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains to achieving stardom in Nashville and Hollywood, from girl singer managed by powerful men to self-made mogul of business and philanthropyoffers a springboard to examining the intersections of gender, class, and culture.

Infused with Smarshs trademark insight, intelligence, and humanity, this is an ambitious book (The New Republic) about the icon Dolly Parton and an in-depth examination into gender and class and what it means to be a woman and a working-class hero that feels particularly important right now (Refinery29).