The Last Folk Hero is a true story about ego and obsession, loyalty and betrayal, race and exploitation (actual and accused), about purity sustained and lost, about creative genius that flourishes despite circumstances and about people who are self-absorbed and unreasonable and often right. The story brings U.S. presidents and congressmen, business tycoons, movie stars, academicians, the cultural elite, and global tastemakers together with some of the most dirt-poor, talent-rich souls from the hardest of hardscrabble America.

That´s a lot for any story to accomplish, but the principal characters are no ordinary individuals. Thornton Dial, an African American factory worker from Pipe Shop, Alabama, rose from obscurity to global fame through contemporary art. Some say Dial´s art is just rusted tin and rotten wood; others compare him to Picasso. Lonnie Holley, long and lean with sprouting dreadlocks and one of his arms covered with jewelry, lives in nearby Harpersville, Alabama, and has also risen to international art fame despite an upbringing that would have sent any ordinary man to an early grave. The lives of Dial and his comrade-in-arts Holley collide around a wealthy, white, and controversial art patron named Bill Arnett. Some believe he is the white knight of the arts, and others believe he is Don Quixote... or worse, Simon Legree. "Black vernacular art," says Bill Arnett in his inimitably exaggerated style, "is the most important cultural phenomenon of our time. This is like the Italian Renaissance in its scope, breadth, and depth. It´s just that the people are the wrong color."

The Last Folk Hero has villains and heroes, though it is never quite clear which is which. This tale is like a holographic baseball card where the players shift poses depending on a slight tilt of the hand. In 1993, 60 Minutes´ Morley Safer profiled Arnett´s relationship with Dial, Holley, and other black folk artists in an episode called "Tin Man." In the months following the 60 Minutes episode, the three men fell into near ruin. But just when things seemed darkest, the unlikely trio staged an unlikely comeback with the help of an even unlikelier combine: the controversial superstar Jane Fonda and more than fifty African American women from an isolated enclave in the backwaters of Alabama.