Mother of Bourbon

by Eric Goodman

Genres: Biographical; World War I

Synopsis

The outrageously inspiring story of the most successful and influential woman distiller of Kentucky Bourbon that nobody’s heard…until now! Introducing Mary Dowling, Mother of Bourbon.

“Eric Goodman is excellent at telling a factual, thrilling, rags-to-riches story with such zest, insight, and alacrity. Mary Dowling has been mostly lost to history, but she’s come alive again with this novel. And now it’s time for the world to get to know and love her.” —Ron Hansen, from the Introduction

Born in 1859 to Irish immigrants who’d escaped the great potato famine, Mary Dowling arrived at the height of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic fervor in America. The hardscrabble life her family led provided the foundation of grit and determination that would serve her well, along with a natural gift for numbers and planning. She married the enterprising John Dowling when she was just fifteen and he was thirty-three. Despite their age gap, John was a kind and adoring husband who recognized Mary’s remarkable skills and made her his partner not just in life but in business. He offered her oversight of their burgeoning bourbon company’s financial books and sought her insight and advice on acquisition and expansion as they steadily grew from distillery investors to sole proprietors of Waterfill and Frazier in Tyrone, Kentucky, just outside Lawrenceburg, in the heart of Bourbon Country.

Mary’s first trials arrive at the turn of the century in a series of tragedies that leave her widowed and with a business no one wants to support. Steering not only the lives of her eight children, she bucks up against a male-dominated bank and distributor that drop her because women don’t run businesses, to align herself with progressive partners who value the dollar over outdated ideas about gender. She scales to ever higher heights, becoming an influential member of Lawrenceburg society while achieving immense wealth at a time when women still couldn’t vote.

When Prohibition arrives with its attendant animosity toward immigrants and Catholics, Mary is forced into semi-retirement—until the federal government comes after her on trumped-up charges of bootlegging. Only then does she bite back, determining that if she is going to be treated like a criminal, she will behave like one—taking her operation to Juarez, Mexico, to begin another iteration of Waterfill and Frazier that would distill and legally distribute bourbon throughout Mexico and, less legally, north into the US.

Mother of Bourbon: The Forgotten Story of Mary Dowling is the never-before-told story of a pioneering and visionary woman who achieved success in a system designed to suppress her, and against a government that strived to repress her. Mary’s courage and determination are the hallmarks that live on today in Mary Dowling Whiskey, as extraordinary and distinctive as the woman whose name it bears.

Release date: April 29, 2025

Publisher: Post Hill Press

Print pages: 272