Holding the Line

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.

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 . . . She comes closer than anyone else I know.' ANNE PATCHETT

'A mesmerising account of women finding their voices.' THE TIMES
'This is a report from the trenches of where the political meets the personal.' JOHN SAYLES
'A jaw-dropping and warm-hearted read about injustice.' WOMAN & HOME

It was the summer of 1983. Barbara Kingsolver had a day job as a scientific writer spending 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

On UK bestseller list w/c 12/06/2023-01/07/2023 for Paperback Fiction

About the Author

Barbara Kingsolver is the global prize-winning and bestselling author of novels including Demon Copperhead, Unsheltered, Flight Behaviour, The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Bean Trees, 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 Women's Prize for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.