Appearing at St. Peter’s Parish Hall | 11:00 am – 11:50 am
In conversation with Karen Winn, moderated by Jamie Brenner.
About the author
Adele Myers grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and has a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently works in advertising and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, son, and their rescue dog, Chipper. The Tobacco Wives is her first novel.
MFOB featured book: The Tobacco Wives
Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who, in 1946, has just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital of the South—where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives. But she soon learns that Bright Leaf isn’t quite the carefree paradise that it seems. A trail of misfortune follows many of the women, and although Maddie is quick to believe that this is a coincidence, she inadvertently uncovers evidence that suggests otherwise. Maddie wants to report what she knows, but in a town where everyone depends on Big Tobacco to survive, she doesn’t know whom she can trust—and fears that exposing the truth may destroy the lives of the proud, strong women with whom she has forged strong bonds. Shedding light on the hidden history of women’s activism during the post-war period, The Tobacco Wives, at its heart, is a deeply human, emotionally satisfying, and dramatic novel about the power of female connection and the importance of seeking truth.
A fourth-generation native of North Carolina, Adele Myers has mined her own family history—including her grandmother’s experience as a private hairdresser for some of the richest women in tobacco country—to craft a story that re-imagines, from a feminist angle, one of the largest corporate frauds of the twentieth century. Many details she incorporated in The Tobacco Wives come from family members who worked in the tobacco factories during that time, and she has done extensive research into how the Big Tobacco companies employed early deceptive marketing techniques to shape public perception.
