An intimate account of country music, social change, and a vanishing way of life as a Shenandoah town collides with the twenty-first century

Winchester, Virginia is an emblematic American town. When John Lingan first traveled there, it was to seek out Jim McCoy: local honky-tonk owner and the DJ who first gave airtime to a brassy-voiced singer known as Patsy Cline, setting her on a course for fame that outlasted her tragically short life. What Lingan found was a town in the midst of an identity crisis.

As the U.S. economy and American culture have transformed in recent decades, the ground under centuries-old social codes has shifted, throwing old folkways into chaos. Homeplace teases apart the tangle of class, race, and family origin that still defines the town, and illuminates questions that now dominate our national conversation—about how we move into the future without pretending our past doesn't exist, about what we salvage and what we leave behind. Lingan writes in “penetrating, soulful ways about the intersection between place and personality, individual and collective, spirit and song.”*

* Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams

Lingan’s immersive journalism uncovers the heart of a changing American town:

• A Patsy Cline Origin Story: Go beyond the myths to the true story of a country music legend, from her tough upbringing on South Kent Street to the pivotal moment local DJ Jim McCoy gave her a shot at the mic.
• The Last Honky-Tonk: Meet Jim McCoy, a Valley lifer who built a sanctuary for the old ways—the Troubadour Bar & Lounge—a place of cigarettes, cowboy hats, and backwoods karaoke on a West Virginia mountaintop.
• Shenandoah Valley Culture: Witness the clash between a centuries-old social order, defined by apple king Harry Flood Byrd, and the forces of the twenty-first century that are transforming the Virginia landscape.
• A Microcosm of America: Discover how one Virginia town’s struggle with its past, its class divides, and its identity crisis reflects the deepest questions facing the entire nation today.