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Overview
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Everybody Rise, a "shimmering" (New York Times Book Review) 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.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780063251137
- ISBN-10: 0063251132
- Publisher: Harper
- Publish Date: March 2023
- Dimensions: 9.06 x 6.22 x 1.42 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
- Page Count: 352
Related Categories
Stephanie Clifford’s second novel, The Farewell Tour, is both a dual-timeline redemption story and an epic journey through a half-century of country music.
At 57, country music star Lillian Waters—or Water Lil, as she’s known to her fans—is drinking too much and feeling her age, and she’s unable to write any new songs. Even worse, she keeps alienating almost everyone in her life. In short, Lillian’s washed up. When a doctor gives her more bad news—her voice is deteriorating due to polyps—she decides to hit the road one last time for a farewell summer tour.
Lillian’s manager, Stanley, puts together a ragtag band of backup musicians and books some county fairs, but the tour gets off to a comically bad start. To try to salvage it, Lillian calls on her old friend Charlie Hagerty, a session musician and songwriter, and he agrees to join.
The Farewell Tour alternates between the summer of 1980 (the novel’s present) and a retrospective sweep of Lillian’s life as told by the woman herself, beginning with her Depression-era childhood on a subsistence farm. Like real-life midcentury country legends Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette, Lillian overcomes a hardscrabble background and abusive early years, though she’s the daughter of Swedish immigrant farmers in Washington rather than from Appalachia or the Deep South. Obsessed with the country music that she first hears as a girl, Lillian sets out to beat the long odds, learning to play the guitar, writing her own songs and performing on radio stations. Over and over, she faces sexism and misogyny in her quest to make it big. But at the center of this epic story is a quiet mystery, a childhood episode that Lillian can’t quite let herself remember.
Full of marvelous period details about World War II-era Tacoma, Washington, and its proto-country music scene, as well as glitzy 1970s Nashville, Tennessee, The Farewell Tour covers a huge amount of ground, with a correspondingly large number of supporting characters, a sometimes dizzying array. Music fans will appreciate the references to real 20th-century country stars and industry players. Lillian herself is an appealing mix: determined and hard charging, blustery and often unable to get out of her own way. Like a country ballad, The Farewell Tour offers a bittersweet testament to the healing power of old love, long friendships and heartfelt songs.
Stephanie Clifford’s second novel, The Farewell Tour, is both a dual-timeline redemption story and an epic journey through a half-century of country music.
At 57, country music star Lillian Waters—or Water Lil, as she’s known to her fans—is drinking too much and feeling her age, and she’s unable to write any new songs. Even worse, she keeps alienating almost everyone in her life. In short, Lillian’s washed up. When a doctor gives her more bad news—her voice is deteriorating due to polyps—she decides to hit the road one last time for a farewell summer tour.
Lillian’s manager, Stanley, puts together a ragtag band of backup musicians and books some county fairs, but the tour gets off to a comically bad start. To try to salvage it, Lillian calls on her old friend Charlie Hagerty, a session musician and songwriter, and he agrees to join.
The Farewell Tour alternates between the summer of 1980 (the novel’s present) and a retrospective sweep of Lillian’s life as told by the woman herself, beginning with her Depression-era childhood on a subsistence farm. Like real-life midcentury country legends Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette, Lillian overcomes a hardscrabble background and abusive early years, though she’s the daughter of Swedish immigrant farmers in Washington rather than from Appalachia or the Deep South. Obsessed with the country music that she first hears as a girl, Lillian sets out to beat the long odds, learning to play the guitar, writing her own songs and performing on radio stations. Over and over, she faces sexism and misogyny in her quest to make it big. But at the center of this epic story is a quiet mystery, a childhood episode that Lillian can’t quite let herself remember.
Full of marvelous period details about World War II-era Tacoma, Washington, and its proto-country music scene, as well as glitzy 1970s Nashville, Tennessee, The Farewell Tour covers a huge amount of ground, with a correspondingly large number of supporting characters, a sometimes dizzying array. Music fans will appreciate the references to real 20th-century country stars and industry players. Lillian herself is an appealing mix: determined and hard charging, blustery and often unable to get out of her own way. Like a country ballad, The Farewell Tour offers a bittersweet testament to the healing power of old love, long friendships and heartfelt songs.