What We Miss When We Reduce Dolly Parton to a Saint

What Dolly Parton taught us about how to give

Dolly Parton was on her way to the studio to polish off “Blue Smoke” when the SUV she was riding in collided with a sedan in a Nashville intersection in 2013. At the hospital, she struck an unlikely friendship with her physician, Naji Abumrad, who, like Parton, was raised in a misty mountain village, hers […]

Aug 26, 2026

What We Miss When We Reduce Dolly Parton to a Saint

The queen of country was a much weirder—and more wonderful—figure than the recent flattening of her suggests.

Aug 26, 2026