This optimistic, witty, and dramatic book depicts a world not often to be found in literature. The novel tells the story of women workers in a textile plant in North Carolina in the 1970s, who are also neighbors in a trailer camp. Many of these women live without the support of men; they are divorced, widowed, or lesbian, black and white. What brings them together is the death of a sick baby left at home alone because there were no health care provisions in the male-run factory, which leads the women to strike. The novel follows the progress of the strike, and of the inner lives of the characters. For course use in: labor studies, lesbian studies, 20th-century U.S. literature, working-class studies