NPR's Rob Schmitz talks to author Martha Ackmann about her new book on "American icon" Dolly Parton and the ambition it took the young Tennessean to reach success.

In 1959, a skinny 13-year-old girl stepped off a bus in Lake Charles, Louisiana, after a 30-hour ride with her grandmother. She walked into a recording studio in a garage attached to a TV repair shop, ...

Before Dolly Parton was a country megastar, she grew up in a poor family in rural Tennessee. She wrote her first song at age 5 and played her first show at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry at 13. Her ...