Cash's 'beautiful and gut-wrenching' novel to Faber

Faber and Faber will publish The Last Ballad, the third novel by Wiley Cash, the winner of both the John Creasey and Gold Dagger Awards.

Inspired by a true story, The Last Ballad’s heroine is Ella May, a 28-year-old single mother and singer whose life and fate comes to be defined by the awful consequences of the bitter, racially charged stand-off following a union strike in the mills of North Carolina in 1929.

Editorial director Angus Cargill, who struck a two-book deal for UK and Commonwealth rights, with Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein on behalf of Nat Sobel at Sobel Weber Associates, described the book as "a beautiful, gut-wrenching" novel.

Cargill added: "It reminded me of first reading The Grapes of Wrath, and more recently The Secret Scripture, it has that same sense of raging, artfully and soulfully, against injustice. A beautiful piece of storytelling, at once timely and timeless, it’s the perfect novel with which to bring this incredibly talented young author on to the Faber fiction list."

Faber will publish in early 2018.