The Moonshiner's Daughter by Donna Everhart

☆☆☆☆☆
ebook, 368 pages
Published December 31st 2019 by Kensington Publishing Corporation
About the Book:
Generations of Sassers have made moonshine in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, North Carolina. Their history is recorded in a leather-bound journal that belongs to Jessie Sasser's daddy, but Jessie wants no part of it. As far as she's concerned, moonshine caused her mother's death a dozen years ago. Her father refuses to speak about her mama, or about the day she died. But Jessie has a gnawing hunger for the truth--one that compels her to seek comfort in food. Yet all her self-destructive behavior seems to do is feed what her school's gruff but compassionate nurse describes as the "monster" inside Jessie. Resenting her father's insistence that moonshining runs in her veins, Jessie makes a plan to destroy the stills, using their neighbors as scapegoats. Instead, her scheme escalates an old rivalry and reveals long-held grudges. As she endeavors to right wrongs old and new, Jessie's loyalties will bring her to unexpected revelations about her family, her strengths--and a legacy that may provide her with the answers she has been longing for.

I was really looking forward to what Donna Everhart would do after The Forgiving Kind. Wow! The prose is eloquent, easy to read, incredibly well researched, and believable. Ms. Everhart knows her subject matter in her heart and writes in a way to bring her own light to a difficult and complicated story. She truly has a gift for creating her characters and making the reader care about them. From the very first page, I was eager to spend time with Jessie and the rest of the Sasser family. They were realistic, and became characters I cared about.

A story of growth. Though sometimes painful, always necessary. And the nudge to do so can come from unexpected places. Just a perfect read! I fell in love with the all the characters and was sad when I came to the end. Compelling. Lovely. Human. Real. Donna Everhart's The Moonshiner's Daughter is a story that is pertinent even today, a distinctive work at once engaging and provocative. Such a gifted writer.

Thank you NetGalley, Donna Everhart and Kensington Publishing Corporation for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an impartial review; all opinions are my own.

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