Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls

 Author Jeannette Walls wrote her first book, The Glass Castle, a memoir, that seems to echo in her novels Half-Broke Horses, The Silver Star, and now Hang the Moon, due out in March. Walls knows kids, hard times, survival, unstable conditions, and chaos. She was the strong girl in The Glass Castle who challenged the injustices of the adult world, the same kind of character she creates in each of her books.

Walls borrowed from her Grandmother Lily’s life for Half Broke Horses, while this time around she finds material in her father Rex’s experience with running bootleg liquor in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of Duke Kincaid, a difficult man who runs the fictional town of Caywood. Although Sallie as a youngster thinks he hung the moon, she learns terrible truths about her father when she comes of age.

Forced to move to the mountains on the other side of the county when her stepmother declares Sallie is harmful to her young half-brother, Sallie lives with Aunt Faye, a woman she loves even when she’s old enough to hear that her aunt is considered a fallen woman. Once her stepmother dies nine years later, Sallie is no longer banished to the hills but is brought back home to take care of young Eddie.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by LitHub, Hang the Moon takes place in Virginia during Prohibition (1920-1933). While she knows she’s part of a wealthy family, it is after her father is out of the picture that Sallie comes to understand how his business always thrived: bootleg whisky. One by one, tragedy strikes, and only Sallie is left standing to take over Duke’s home and business, providing for other family members who emerge from the shadows.

Sallie faces numerous secrets and scandals among her family members, and in the business world, she is forced to deal with conflict and mayhem, fighting both the government that has prohibited liquor and also the feuding Bonds, a whisky-running family in a neighboring county. As in Walls’ other books, the protagonist – Sallie in this case – shows great courage and wisdom as she emerges as a leader in her town.

Jeannette Walls is a writer and journalist. She became a book author in 2005 with the release of her bestselling memoir, The Glass Castle. The book was adapted into a film and released in 2017. She lives in Virginia on a large farm with her husband.