The Moonshiner's Daughter: A Southern Family and Loyalty Saga

If you were captivated by the portrayal of 1960s North Carolina in Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing, then Donna Everhart’s The Moonshiner’s Daughter will undoubtedly transport you back to that nostalgic setting. Everhart’s skillful storytelling in this Southern coming-of-age novel set in North Carolina in 1960 is both sensitive and masterful, drawing readers in with its authenticity and grit.

The Moonshiner’s Daughter follows the life of sixteen-year-old Jessie Sasser, who is determined to break away from her family’s history. For generations, the Sasser family has been involved in moonshining in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, North Carolina, a history recorded in her father's leather-bound journal. But Jessie wants no part in it, blaming moonshine for her mother’s death twelve years earlier. Despite her father’s refusal to talk about her mother or the circumstances of her death, Jessie is consumed by a desire for the truth, finding solace in food and engaging in self-destructive behavior that only seems to feed the inner turmoil described by her school’s nurse as a “monster.”

Frustrated by her father’s insistence that moonshining is in her blood, Jessie devises a plan to destroy the stills, using their neighbors as scapegoats. However, her scheme only serves to reignite old rivalries and expose long-held grudges. As she embarks on a journey to right the wrongs of the past and present, Jessie's discoveries will lead her to unexpected revelations about her family, her own strengths, and a legacy that may hold the answers she has been seeking.

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