Folly tells the story of women without men, divorced or widowed or lesbian, workers in a textile plant in North Carolina in the 1970s, who are neighbors in a trailer camp, along with their aging mothers and teenage daughters. What brings them together-black women as well as white women-is the death of a sick baby left necessarily at home alone because there were no health care provisions in the male owned and run factory. After the baby's death, the women decide to strike. The novel records the winning of that strike, and, at the same time, the inner lives of the younger and older characters surrounding the majoy strike leaders. It is an optimistic, witty, and dramatic book, rare in that it depicts black and white women working as peers together, and rare in that it depicts a world not often to be found in literature.