Woman Walk the Line

Full-tilt, hardcore, down-home, and groundbreaking, the women of country music speak volumes with every song. From Maybelle Carter to Dolly Parton, k.d. lang to Taylor Swiftthese artists provided pivot points, truths, and doses of courage for women writers at every stage of their lives. Whether its Rosanne Cash eulogizing June Carter Cash or a seventeen-year-old Taylor Swift considering the golden glimmer of another precocious superstar, Brenda Lee, its the humanity beneath the music that resonates. Here are deeply personal essays from award-winning writers on femme fatales, feminists, groundbreakers, and truth tellers. Acclaimed historian Holly George Warren captures the spark of the rockabilly sensation Wanda Jackson; Entertainment Weeklys Madison Vain considers Loretta Lynns girl-power anthem The Pill; and rocker Grace Potter embraces Linda Ronstadts unabashed visual and musical influence. Patty Griffin acts like a balm on a post-9/11 survivor on the run; Emmylou Harris offers a gateway through paralyzing grief; and Lucinda Williams proves that greatness is where you find it. Part history, part confessional, and part celebration of country, Americana, and bluegrass and the women who make them, Woman Walk the Line is a very personal collection of essays from some of Americas most intriguing women writers. It speaks to the ways in which artists mark our lives at different ages and in various states of grace and imperfectionand ultimately how music transforms not just the person making it, but also the listener.