“I knew I was way over my head,” said Beth Macy. As a feature writer for a regional newspaper attempting to write a nonfiction book about the global economy, she had her work cut out for her. Macy did it though, and her first book, Factory Man, was published in July 2014, making The New York Times’ best seller list and receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews. This week, Macy will share her book with Charlottesville during the Virginia Festival of the Book.
Inspired by Jared Soares’ photography of abandoned and re-purposed factories, Factory Man grew out of a series of long-form features she wrote in The Roanoke Times that focused on globalization and its effects on Southwest Virginia. The series won Macy the Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ 2012 Best in Business Print-Feature award. “The book only came about because I stayed… and dug in my journalistic heels,” said Macy.
Factory Man focuses on the Bassett family and the rise and fall of its furniture manufacturing empire. Macy masterfully weaves accounts from family members, former factory workers, industry competitors and economic experts to tell a story that she said is, “far grittier than what had been reported in the newspapers and annual reports.” In the book, the Bassett furniture factories serve as case studies for the small town effects of globalization, describing in heartwrenching detail what happens on a human level when an industry moves most of its jobs overseas.
Discussing her decision to include the lives of specific people, especially the factory workers, when examining an issue that’s global in scale, Macy quoted writer Will Durant: “Civilization is a stream with banks… The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks.” By approaching it from a personal level, Macy takes a story that might have simply been a competent explanation of economics and transforms it into a page-turner full of relationships and family politics with wide appeal.
Originally from Ohio, Macy moved to Roanoke in 1989 and worked for The Roanoke Times for more than two decades. She often collaborated closely with the newspaper’s photographers to tell stories about the under-represented people in the region. She won countless awards for her features looking at teen pregnancy, immigrant populations and other often overlooked topics in the Roanoke area. Early in her tenure with the newspaper, she had an editor who insisted that, “stories need to reflect the diversity of our population,” pushing her to reach out to people from all walks of life. She integrates herself into a community while researching a story. “When I’m writing about immigrants, I eat the pozole,” she said.
Daily, she sought to develop deeper insight into the lives of her neighbors and, as she puts it, “talk to people outside of her zip code.” Rather than taking her journalistic skills to a larger market, Macy continued to invest in her local community and dig into the stories it held. Now having spent half of her life in Virginia, she writes like someone who has been here since birth. She’s not afraid to talk to anyone, to dig and pester for the interesting anecdotes. In some cases, she’s even developed decades-long friendships with her sources and subjects in the Roanoke area. This personal investment in her work is apparent in Factory Man as well.
Not one to rest, Macy is already at work on a second book. Titled True Vine, the forthcoming book investigates the story of “two sons of a sharecropper who were kidnapped and sold to the circus” in Franklin County, Virginia. “I have 28,000 more words to write by September,” she said.
Countless interviews, conversations and research trips will go into those words, but Macy’s tenacity cannot be overestimated. “We have to keep talking to people,” she said. Whether that means another stroll around a parking lot or neighborhood before driving back home, or another phone call (or five) to a person who’s avoiding her, Macy doesn’t quit until she finds the nugget “that makes your hair stand up on the back of your neck, [or] makes the story truer, makes it sing.”
With Factory Man’s publication, readers outside of Southwest Virginia were finally treated to her thoughtful interviews and empathetic representations of the edges of our world, girded by her hard-nosed reporting. Even as her readership grows, she’ll always be a hometown favorite in Roanoke. And here’s the secret about Macy: She makes everyone feel like part of the hometown crowd; she treats everyone as a neighbor.
On March 18, Macy is the featured speaker at the Virginia Festival of the Book’s Leadership Breakfast. She will also be part of the Virginia Made: Books, Beer, and Music event on March 17 at C’ville Coffee.
