The Farewell Tour
“Breathtaking…shimmering” - The New York Times “Must-read country-music novel” - The Tennessean. Information about Stephanie Clifford’s new novel about women, music and the West, The Farewell Tour. Includes reviews, a Spotify playlist, book-club questions and resources and contact information.
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Everybody Rise, a rich and riveting novel with the exquisite historical detail and evocative settings of The Cold Millions and Great Circle that tells the story of one unforgettable woman’s rise in country and western music.
“Breathtaking…a shimmering paean to the deeply flawed American West” - The New York Times
THE FAREWELL TOUR
It’s 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time.
Worn out from her years in the music business and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian, a country music singer, songwriter, and electric guitarist, cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour. Her last stop on the tour is the most important one: the desolate farm she left behind at age ten and the sister she is finally ready to confront about an agonizing betrayal in their childhood.
As the novel crisscrosses eras, moving between Lillian’s younger days—the Depression, World War II, the rise of the Nashville sound—and life in 1980, we see her striving to build a career in a notoriously unforgiving business, making hard choices as she tries to redefine music, love, middle age, and womanhood on her own terms.
Nearing her final stop, Lillian is forced to confront those choices and how they shaped her life. Would a different version of herself have found the happiness that has eluded her? When she reaches her Washington State hometown for her very last show, though, she’ll undergo a reckoning with the past that forces her to reconsider her entire life story.
Exploring an unforgettable woman’s journey in a world—and an art form—made for men, The Farewell Tour is a powerful and revelatory book that examines memory, creativity, and destiny.
