The Farewell Tour

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Farewell Tour

Author: Stephanie Clifford

Publisher: Harper

Release Date: 3.7.23

Publisher’s Summary 

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Everybody Rise, a rich and riveting novel with the exquisite historical detail and evocative settings of The Cold Millions and Great Circle that tells the story of one unforgettable woman's rise in country and western music.

It's 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time.

Jaded from her years in the music business, perpetually hungover, and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour featuring some old hands from her early days playing honky-tonk bars in Washington State and Nashville, plus a few new ones. She yearns to feel the rush of making live music one more time and bask in the glow of a packed house before she makes the last, and most important, stop on the tour: the farm she left behind at age ten and the sister she is finally ready to confront about an agonizing betrayal in their childhood.

As the novel crisscrosses eras, moving between Lillian's youth--the Depression, the Second World War, the rise of Nashville--and her middle-aged life in 1980, we see her striving to build a career in the male-dominated world of country music, including the hard choices she makes as she tries to redefine music, love, aging, and womanhood on her own terms.

Nearing her final tour stop, Lil is forced to confront those choices and how they shaped her life. Would a different version of herself have found the happiness and success that has eluded her? When she reaches her Washington hometown for her very last show, though, she'll undergo a reckoning with the past that forces her to reconsider her entire life story.

Exploring one unforgettable woman's creativity, ambition, and sacrifices in a world--and an art form--made for men, The Farewell Tour asks us to consider how much of our past we can ever leave behind.

My Review

The Farewell Tour spans the years from the Great Depression to the 1980s, through the eyes of Lena Thorsell aka "Lillian Waters," one of the most hardscrabble, determined, and self-destructive protagonists I've ever encountered. I recommend this widely and especially if you love an underdog story, the movies A Star is Born and Coal Miner's Daughter, or if you have a musical background (a lot of details about instruments, sheet music, arrangements, etc).

The massive amount of research necessary for this novel is evident in the endless details and it's no wonder why, author Stephanie Clifford was an investigative journalist and a New York Times reporter for almost a decade. As a matter of fact, Clifford wove the story of Lillian's life in such great detail, that I had to keep reminding myself she was actually a fictitious character.  

This will likely be chosen for someone's celebrity book club so go ahead and pre-order your copy now!