Jason Chambers: In the first of several historical novels I plan to review this month, Matt Bondurant writes a story based on the story of his grandfather and two granduncles, notorious moonshiners in the Prohibition and the years immediately following.
Bondurant does a great job in this novel shifting from magnificent imagery to violent outbursts of fury and drunkenness. The brothers – Howard, the war-haunted giant, Forrest, the mythic survivor, and Jack, the fearful dreamer – traverse a hard-scrabble Appalachian world where liquor becomes trade and livelihood, courage and shame. The story is framed by the appearance of writer Sherwood Anderson, on magazine assignment, as he tries to suss out the truth to the moonshine trade, which everyone knows about and about which no one will talk, and the personal tragedies and political corruption that accompanied it.
I liked this book quite a lot, although I would venture to suggest that the Anderson passages were not necessary. I don’t think that they hinder the story, but I do think that the Bondurant Boys and the cast of Virginian drinkers and holy-rollers and lawmen carry the book quite sufficiently. When Anderson appears, it is clear that his modernist views and appraisals are not only unwelcome in these hills, but are simply irrelevant.
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