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The National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Heartland focuses her laser-sharp insights on a working-class icon and one of the most unifying figures in American culture: Dolly Parton.Growing up amid Kansas wheat fields and airplane factories Sarah Smarsh witnessed firsthand the particular vulnerabilities—and strengths—of women in working poverThe National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Heartland focuses her laser-sharp insights on a working-class icon and one of the most unifying figures in American culture: Dolly Parton.Growing up amid Kansas wheat fields and airplane factories Sarah Smarsh witnessed firsthand the particular vulnerabilities—and strengths—of women in working poverty. Meanwhile country songs by female artists played in the background telling powerful stories about life men hard times and surviving. In her family she writes “country music was foremost a language among women. Its how we talked to each other in a place where feelings arent discussed.” And no one provided that language better than Dolly Parton.Smarsh challenged a typically male vision of the rural working class with her first book Heartland starring the bold hard-luck women who raised her. Now in She Come By It Natural originally published in a four-part series for The Journal of Roots Music No Depression Smarsh explores the overlooked contributions to social progress by such women—including those averse to the term “feminism”—as exemplified by Dolly Partons life and art. Far beyond the recently resurrected “Jolene” or quintessential “9 to 5” Partons songs for decades have validated women who go unheard: the poor woman the pregnant teenager the struggling mother disparaged as “trailer trash.” Partons broader career—from singing on the front porch of her familys cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains to achieving stardom in Nashville and Hollywood from “girl singer” managed by powerful men to leader of a self-made business and philanthropy empire—offers a springboard to examining the intersections of gender class and culture. Infused with Smarshs trademark insight intelligence and humanity She Come By It Natural is a sympathetic tribute to the icon Dolly Parton and—call it whatever you like—the organic feminism she embodies.(less)