Nominated for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award 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 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. It&;s how we talked to each other in a place where feelings aren&;t 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 Parton&;s life and art. Far beyond the recently resurrected &;Jolene&; or quintessential &;9 to 5,&; Parton&;s songs for decades have validated women who go unheard: the poor woman, the pregnant teenager, the struggling mother disparaged as &;trailer trash.&; Parton&;s broader career&;from singing on the front porch of her family&;s 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 Smarsh&;s 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.