Stephanie Clifford- The Farewell Tour

Stephanie Clifford is an investigative journalist and a bestselling novelist. As a New York Times reporter for almost a decade, she covered courts, business and media. She now writes long-form investigations about criminal justice and business for the Times, the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Wired, Elle, Bloomberg Businessweek and other publications. Her accolades include the Loeb Award in investigative reporting; the Deborah Howell Award for Writing She grew up in Seattle and lives in Brooklyn with her family. Country-western star Lillian Waters has lived large: performing in front of packed houses with a chaser of hard partying.  She came of age with the big names—Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette—but by 1980, they are still charting and her career is on shaky ground. Out of the public eye for five years, Lillian’s now on a farewell tour, playing honky-tonk bars, backed up by a ragged band comprised of some of her oldest bandmates and some new additions, with no time for rehearsal.  She’s also traveling with her secrets, like nursing a diagnosis of cancer that will silence her eventually.  Tired of running from her real history—some of which she rewrote to fit country music stardom, some too deeply buried for her to remember—she’s planned her final performance to be in a far corner of Washington state, the place where she was born.  It’s time to go home and face her sister Hen, the pain of a terrible betrayal, and the impoverished farm no one knows she came from and left, alone, at age 10. THE FAREWELL TOUR (Harper; On Sale: March 7, 2023; Hardcover) by Stephanie Clifford is a full-throated ballad. It encapsulates two stories: an intimate portrait of the indomitable Lillian and a panoramic of our culture—from the West’s near-mythical histories of explorers, loggers, trappers, farmers laid out in textbooks and county fair’s Pioneer Days, to the negative spaces where the stories of women are left out. Clifford, a reporter for almost a decade at The New York Times, brings her reporter’s skills to conjure the rich and complex story of Lillian Waters, aka Lena Thorsell, the second daughter of two defeated immigrants struggling in a country that promised so much.  She deftly moves between the eras that defined her tart-tongued heroine’s life: the Depression and the Second World War; her budding career and the rise of Nashville’s male-dominated country music business scene; and the humiliation of aging out in the late 70s.  There are hard choices for Lillian every step of the way:  of her music, her heart, her soul. Clifford weaves a mesmerizing portrait of one woman’s creativity, ambition and sacrifices in a business made for men.  As the tour brings Lillian finally home, she is forced to reckon with a tragedy she was not prepared to remember. Clifford asks if we can ever be free of our true history:  she makes us love her heroine for what she chooses to do with hers—an anthem, a chorus, for the West’s forgotten women. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephanie Clifford is an investigative journalist and a bestselling novelist. As a New York Times reporter for almost a decade, she covered courts, business and media. She now writes long-form investigations about criminal justice and business for the Times, the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Wired, Elle, Bloomberg Businessweek and other publications. Her accolades include the Loeb Award in investigative reporting; the Deborah Howell Award for Writing Excellence from the News Leaders Association; the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in explanatory reporting; the Deadline Club Award in magazine profiles; and others. Everybody Rise, her first book, was a New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. She grew up in Seattle and lives in Brooklyn with her family. Twitter: https://twitter.com/stephcliff Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cliffordwrites/