Call Home the Heart is the story of Ishma Waycaster, an impoverished woman who, pregnant for the third time and discouraged by the endless struggle of rural life in the Great Smoky Mountains, flees a mill town, where she becomes involved in union organizing and a bloody strike (modeled on the Gastonia strike of 1929). Burke provides a remarkably honest portrayal of the conflicts between Ishma's sexual and emotional needs and her intellectual and political loyalties, and of the racial issues raised by the strike.