wp-1578005394714.jpgWelcome to my stop on the The Moonshiner’s Daughter blog tour sponsored by Suzy Approved Book Tours! Thank you to Suzy for the invitation!

Check out my review of The Forgiving Kind from last year.

About the Book:

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.

My Thoughts:

Ok, so I happen to LOVE Donna Everhart. We are talking BIG love. She’s a North Carolina author who features North Carolina settings, and her books are filled with warmth and heart. Not only that, while I have loved every book, they only get better and better.

Set in Wilkes County, North Carolina, The Moonshiner’s Daughter is Jessie Sasser’s coming-of-age. Her family has lived in the Brushy Mountains for generations making moonshine.

Jessie, however, is no fan of moonshine. It killed her mother.

Jessie is eager to know the truth of what happened to her mom, but no one is talking about it, especially not her dad. And Jessie has pain and hurt deep inside that causes her to seek comfort from food.

Moonshining was dangerous business, and I recently learned from my dad that a family member of mine or two took part. I think this connection enthralled me with the book even more.

As with all her books, Everhart lays out the time and place with precision. I am quite familiar with Wilkes County. It’s a beautiful place I drive through on the way to the Blue Ridge mountains.

Jessie is a charmer. How she dealt with all her feelings was written in a way so relatable, especially for losing her mom at such a young age. The Moonshiner’s Daughter is a deeply emotional story as a result. I’ve mentioned before my best friend lost her mother when we were teens. Everhart captures that enduring pain in a way that viscerally took me back.

I will never tire of Donna Everhart’s stories. She brings the feelings, the strong characterization, precise settings, and stories that deeply move me every single time. I hope she has a neverending amount of stories to tell us because I’ll be here waiting to read them.

I received a complimentary copy.

About the Author:

Donna Everhart is a USA Today bestselling author who writes stories of family hardship and troubled times in a bygone south. Her debut, THE EDUCATION OF DIXIE DUPREE was an IndieNext Pick, Business Insider’s Pick, Library Journal Top Pick, and long listed for the Southern Book Prize. Her second novel, THE ROAD TO BITTERSWEET was a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick. She is the Southeastern Library Association’s (SELA) Author of the Year in Fiction for 2018.

A native of North Carolina, she resides in her home state with her husband and their tiny heart stealing Yorkshire terrier, Mister.

Readers can also visit her at www.donnaeverhart.com.

Have you read The Moonshiner’s Daughter, or is it on your TBR? Happy Reading! ~ Jennifer THR