Woman Walk the Line

In this collection of personal essays, women music writers pay tribute to female country artists from June Carter Cash and Dolly Parton to Taylor Swift.

Part history, part confessional, and part celebration of country music and the women who make it, Woman Walk the Line is an intimate collection of essays from some of America’s most intriguing women writers. It celebrates how these groundbreaking musicians have provided pivot points, important truths, and doses of courage for women at every stage of their lives. It explores the many ways in which music can transform not just the person making it, but also the listener.

Rosanne Cash eulogizes June Carter Cash. A seventeen-year-old Taylor Swift considers the golden glimmer of another precocious superstar, Brenda Lee. The music of Patty Griffin is a balm for 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.

Elsewhere in this wide-ranging anthology, acclaimed historian Holly George Warren captures the spark of rockabilly sensation Wanda Jackson; Entertainment Weekly’s Madison Vain considers Loretta Lynn’s girl-power anthem “The Pill”; and rocker Grace Potter embraces Linda Ronstadt’s unabashed visual and musical influence.