THE MOONSHINER'S DAUGHTER is available at:
THE MOONSHINER’S DAUGHTER by Donna Everhart
“Some legacies are better left behind…”
Set in North Carolina in 1960 and brimming with authenticity and grit, The Moonshiner’s Daughter evokes the singular life of sixteen-year-old Jessie Sasser, a young woman determined to escape her family’s past . . .
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.
RECOGNITION for THE MOONSHINER'S DAUGHTER
- THE MOONSHINER’S DAUGHTER is a Southern Literary Review January Book of the Month
- THE MOONSHINER’S DAUGHTER is a Southern Lady Magazine Book Club Selection
- THE MOONSHINER’S DAUGHTER is a Deep South magazine Spring Reading Pick
- THE MOONSHINER’S DAUGHTER is a MaryJanesFarm Farmgirl Book Club selection in February/March issue (on sale early January)
- THE MOONSHINER’S DAUGHTER is one of SheReads Most Anticipated Women’s Fiction of 2020
PRAISE for THE MOONSHINER'S DAUGHTER
“Rousing… movingly explores Jessie’s struggle with her eating disorder, viscerally describing her twin desires for nourishment and purging in relation to a deep need to define herself… Everhart’s story of self-discovery, rife with colorful characters and a satisfying twist, will thrill readers.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW for The Moonshiner’s Daughter
“Everhart’s portrayal of Jessie’s coming-of-age is realistic and heartbreaking. You will root for Jessie, the Sassers and the moonshine before it is all over.” Linda Hodges, Fiction Addiction, Greenville, SC
“This riveting novel set in the 1960s will have readers, especially those who enjoy Kaye Gibbons and Anna Jean Mayhew, captivated from the first page.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW for The Moonshiner’s Daughter
“The author’s fine, sympathetic delineation of the teenager’s severe eating disorder, along with its causes and consequences, is one of the novelist’s most powerful achievements.” – Southern Literary Review, read the entire review here.
