The Moonshine Women

by Michelle Collins Anderson

Genres: Coming of Age; Small Town & Rural

Synopsis

In the Prohibition era Missouri Ozarks, three sisters take over their father’s moonshine business in an evocative story of reinvention, sisterhood, and the alchemy of love for readers of Jeannette Walls, Fannie Flagg, Sue Monk Kidd, and Donna Everhart.

Every batch of Strong moonshine has its own special flavor, thanks to the secret ingredients that matriarch Lidy Strong adds to the barrels of fermenting corn mash. Whether a bucketful of golden peaches, a ripe melon or juicy, jewel-toned berries, that extra “something something” is what makes the Strong “shine” so prized—and allows the family to survive after crop prices plummeted in the wake of the Great War.

Each of the Strong sisters, too, is distinct. Stoic, steadfast Rebecca would rather be with her beloved farm animals or off hunting in the woods than socializing. Middle sister Elsie is kindhearted, beautiful—and itching for a life more thrilling than the farm can offer. Jace, the youngest, is known far and wide as “Shine,” a name that suits her fiery personality and flaming red hair as much as her innate skill with a still.

Their father, Hiram, has been drowning himself in grief and liquor ever since his wife died. But the moonshine business is unforgiving, especially with Prohibition agents turning up in every creek and holler. When tragedy strikes, it falls to the Strong women to keep the still running, the family together, and hope burning on the horizon.

From the Ozark mountains edged in oak and pine, to the outlaw paradise of Hot Springs, Arkansas—where gangsters like Al Capone line the bar at the Southern Club—the sisters’ quests for vengeance, healing, and love will drive them forward, in search of a future as transformative and powerful as the purest Strong moonshine.

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

She waited impatiently for the cedars.

The dry summer heat had held all through September, finally breaking in October with soaking rains and chilly nights that had the Strong family hauling out their quilts. The hills surrounding the cabin and fields turned colors, beginning with the bright red pops of leggy sassafras trees, bushy sumac and Virginia creeper vines that gave way to golden hickory, river birch and—near the creek—stately yellow cottonwoods. The oaks stubbornly held their leaves, yielding only a buttery brown before turning the color of old soil.

Likewise, the scrubby evergreens began to take on an orange cast as the fall wore on. And the cedar berries, which first appeared as clusters of green in compact cones, began ripening to the dusty deep hue of a blueberry. Every morning, after Lidy finished cooking for Hiram and the girls, cleaning up the dishes and sweeping the cabin clean, she wrapped up in a woolen shawl and walked the woods and fencerows with a tin pail.

Lidy’s thoughts were a jumble. She alternated between worry for the baby and a low boiling anger at her daughter-in-law. How could she be so selfish? So stupid? These thoughts gave her a brief pang—but then she felt righteous. Who was here fixing things, after all? And who was suffering? Not Alta, of that she was sure. And meanwhile, Lidy battled bone-deep exhaustion from doing the work of a much younger woman every day.

She had known something was terribly wrong when Rebecca showed up at dusk two months ago on a field mule which could scarce be spared during harvest time to visit an old widow lady three hollers over. The thin switch of a girl wore dusty dungarees and a baggy cotton work shirt cinched with a piece of twine, her sun-bronzed face shaded by a large straw hat. If she hadn’t known better, Lidy might have thought a young man had arrived in her patch of the Ozark Mountains, looking for work or selling something out of his saddle bag.

“Ma fell out the barn loft and she won’t wake up.” No greeting, no preamble. Lidy knew it took every ounce of bravery the girl possessed to report this to her. Because Lidy was not just the girl’s grandmother, she was the closest thing there was to a doctor in these parts. She was the first one summoned if a birth looked worrisome, a broken leg needed setting or a child spiked a fever that wouldn’t break. Lidy was full of what folks around called “granny cures,” part training, part tinctures and herbal expertise, part common sense—topped with a goodly dollop of superstition. Fetching Lidy meant admitting things were serious.

Lidy had peered up at the girl’s countenance, hidden beneath the brim of her hat. Her large brown eyes were full of fear, and her dirty face showed the evidence of tear tracks, the only clean spots on the child. Lidy kept her own face expressionless, not wanting to further frighten the girl. But if Alta wouldn’t wake up … ​well, it didn’t bode well.

After Lidy arrived at the cabin to assess the damage Alta had suffered in her fall—certainly no accident, she surmised, although she didn’t say that out loud—Alta was as good as gone. The question was whether the baby was alive. She put her hand on the mound of Alta’s stomach, estimating her at six or seven months along. She was carrying low, which meant a boy. And hadn’t Lidy confirmed it, a few months back, cajoling her reluctant daughter-in-law until she was allowed to fasten Alta’s wedding band to a strand of her long, dark hair? Dangling it over the mound of Alta’s belly, she held her breath as the ring began to move. Back and forth, back and forth. Not in circles. She couldn’t hide her pleasure: Hiram would have a son at last. Yet Alta hadn’t even smiled. As if Lidy had said “Looks like rain” instead of “Looks like you’ll be having a son.”

It took nearly twenty minutes. Rebecca and Elsie, ten and six, crowded around Alta, petting her arm and smoothing the hair away from her brow. Hiram sat beside her, too, his head resting despondently in his hands. The truth was, Lidy had just about given up when she felt it: a burst like a bubble at the surface of a pond, followed by a writhing elbow jutting out as it turned.

“Thatta boy,” Lidy said. Her granddaughters’ eyes grew large.

“He’s all right?” Elsie, the nurturer, could not hide the hope in her voice. Rebecca, as silent as she was sensitive, looked to her gran for the truth. But Lidy was impenetrable metal in looks and demeanor: steel-colored eyes set in a face burnished by decades of sun into the mottled copper of a well-used penny, framed by hair the silvery gray of pure iron. The hard line of her mouth gave nothing away.

“He’s alive,” Lidy said. “That’s good enough for now.”

So had begun the race against time. How long could Alta hang on, a body without benefit of a mind? How much time before the baby could survive in the outside world?

Lidy stopped dead in her tracks at a unique, piercing cry that could only mean one thing: the cedar waxwings were back. After a summer in cooler climes, the chubby birds had returned, with their black robber’s masks and tails that looked to have been dipped in gold. And sure enough, just as Lidy came upon a stand of ten-year-old cedars at the edge of the woods, she startled one of the titular birds. The creature squeaked and fluttered its way out of a tree’s thick middle before taking to the sky.

“If they are ripe enough for you, sir, they are good enough for me.”

Lidy put her pail on the ground and reached into her apron pocket for a tin of salve made from beeswax and rubbed it into her dry, large-knuckled hands. Then she reached for one of the evergreen’s branches, slightly bowed from the weight of the berry-filled cones. Cedars were scratchy by nature. Just poking around in the thick swaths of needles could bring blood and the cedar oil could cause a rash. The salve gave Lidy some protection, but she avoided the spiky sprays as best she could in her quest to fill her bucket.

But the smell … ​that sure didn’t hurt anything. Lidy inhaled the sharp green odor and decided it alone could heal a world of wrongs.

Around her, there was the bustle of birds and squirrels in the wooded thicket. Living creatures were getting ready for winter, fattening up on fruits, berries, nuts and seeds, finding shelters, lining nests. Alta should be doing the same for her own family: putting up the rest of the vegetables, salting and curing the pork from the slaughtered pig, filling the cellar full of root vegetables—carrots, potatoes, yams, beets, radishes—and drying herbs. She should be lining the top dresser drawer with a hand-knit blanket, making a bed for the baby, crocheting a sweater and booties to keep him warm in the coming months.

But not a hat. Everyone knew making a cap for a baby before it was born was bad luck.

Maybe Alta did not know that superstition, being a town girl. Perhaps she had unwittingly crocheted herself into this mess. Lidy shook her head at her own ridiculous thoughts. Even a cursory look around the cabin showed there was no planning for this child. No knitting or sewing of tiny frocks or blankets, socks or mittens.

Because Alta had no intention of having a baby. She knew when she threw herself from that barn loft what would happen. What she hoped would happen, anyway. That the child would come early. Too early. And die.

And now, by God, it would happen. The baby would still come before his time.

But now, at least, he had a chance to live.

Lidy returned to the cabin, glancing at Alta, who remained exactly as she had left her that morning. She did a quick check of Alta’s belly, warm beneath her hand, before setting about the business of making the tea: a cup of cedar berries boiled with twice as much water. After the mixture steeped, Lidy removed the berries and added a touch of honey to taste.

“Ooh, it’s so pretty! Can I try some, Gran?” said Elsie, upon returning from her morning chores and finding Lidy’s concoction cooling on the windowsill.

“No, that’s your mama’s,” Lidy said. “It’s time for the baby to be born and she needs all the help she can get.”

Over the next three days, Lidy managed to dribble most of the tea into Alta’s mouth and throat without choking her. But nothing happened. It was discouraging, but all the same, Lidy admired the child’s stubborn will to remain in the perceived safe space of Alta’s womb. It was a doggedness that had served him well thus far.

“It’s high time you come out and meet us,” Lidy said to her unborn grandson, one crisp October morning that left a velvety frost over the corn stubble and the remaining brown leaves on the trees. “The people who will love on you and keep you safe. And that damn sure doesn’t include your mother.”

As if on cue, Alta’s belly tightened, a firm high knot hardening and holding itself stiffly before releasing. Lidy watched, amazed, as—a few minutes later—the whole routine started again.

“Why, I’ll be good and goddamned,” said Lidy. “It’s time.”

She rushed to the front porch and rang the dinner bell, even though it was only nine thirty in the morning. As usual, Elsie was first to show up, eager for the more social parts of the day over the solitude and drudgery of chores.

“Tell your daddy the baby is coming,” Lidy yelled. “Then I need you and Rebecca.”

Lidy had thought this through. Chatty Elsie would be asking questions as fast as they popped into her head, but she was quick and sympathetic to suffering. Rebecca was quiet, hardworking and had all the experience of birthing calves and foals. It had been a while since Lidy herself had shepherded a birth, and she knew her strength—if it was needed to pull or help push—wasn’t what it used to be. But Rebecca was solid and strong as an ox, preferring to do rather than say. She was the calm to Elsie’s storm, and together they’d make a fine team to bring their brother into the world.

The cabin took on a bustling, almost festive atmosphere. Rebecca brought in two large pails of water; Elsie put them on the wood stove to boil.

Hiram poked his head in the cabin door exactly once and had it nearly bitten clean off by the womenfolk. One woman anyway.

“Out! Busy yourself in the barn, Hiram,” Lidy ordered. He did not have it in him to see his wife in additional pain, let alone blood or any of the other unmentionables involved in birthing. “Go chop some firewood.”

“But …”

“But nothing.” Lidy was stern. “Scram!”

“Please.” Hiram fumbled in his pants pocket for his prized folding knife. “Put this under her mattress, won’t you?”

Lidy smiled despite herself. She knew good and well he had not placed a skillet under the bed to guarantee a girl the previous two times he had awaited a birth. But her only son wanted to do everything in his power to ensure this would be a boy. Men were funny about sons. Even though Hiram had not gotten along with his own father—or perhaps because of that—he seemed desperate for this chance for a different relationship. Or maybe it was the relief another pair of broad shoulders could provide that appealed to him after so many years of overwork.

Lidy slid the knife into her apron pocket. “It will be all right, Hiram,” she said, shooing him out the door. “You’ll see.”

“Gran, come quick,” Elsie called. She held a pocket watch in her hand that had belonged to Alta’s father, a rare treasure from her mother’s prior life. “Her belly turns rock solid every two minutes now.”

Had she overdone the cedar berry tea? If things happened too fast there could be tearing or hemorrhaging. Too much pressure on the child.

“Well, we better get ready to catch your baby brother.” Lidy pushed up Alta’s skirt and positioned her legs apart with the knees up, feet resting on the bottom of the mattress. Then she pulled down the old flour sack that was serving as a diaper.

In that instant, Lidy regretted her decision to involve the girls. What must it feel like, seeing their mother as helpless as a babe, soiled and oblivious of her ripe stench? But there was no use worrying about that now.

Elsie’s eyes were fixated on the patch of the purply-pink skin between her mother’s legs, growing larger with each tensing and release of Alta’s body. She moved to her mother’s side—out of sight of her sibling’s determined struggle—and took her mother’s limp hand.

“Mama, he’s coming,” she whispered. Lidy knew she didn’t like this one bit, the painful-looking stretching, the body doing what it would without her mother’s permission. Her modest mother, who would not tolerate this indignity were she awake.

Lidy’s worry grew as the baby crowned and then lost steam.

“Stuck shoulder,” Lidy said, under her breath. Alta was no help. No additional pushing or contorting, standing or squatting, was possible. To the silent granddaughter sitting between her mother’s legs, she said: “Go wash your hands with the lye soap. Every inch of skin and under the nails.”

Quick as a barn cat, Rebecca did her bidding. When she returned, slender hands red and raw, she looked expectantly at her grandmother.

“Slip your hand inside there until you feel that shoulder and push it in gently. Then when you feel your mama pushing, try helping if you can find anywhere to take hold.”

Lidy cursed her own knobby arthritic hands that made her worthless. But Rebecca didn’t need her help. A quick motion and she had turned the child, and in the next instant, with the aid of a strong contraction, Rebecca caught the slippery, blood-and-goop-covered babe in her lap.

Lidy snatched it up, vigorously rubbing and drying the purply body. Where was the breath? There needed to be crying. She had brought the fragile being into the world too soon.

Just as hopelessness set in, the baby opened its mouth and cut loose the highest-pitched, most awful noise Lidy ever heard. Yet even with her whole body set on edge by that yowl, she was jubilant. The child would live.

In the next breath, Lidy saw what she—in her panic—had missed: this was no baby boy.

She didn’t trust her experienced eyes to be telling the truth. She turned the squalling child in her hands, spread the skinny legs in a vain search for the equipment a boy should have. Instead, she found creases upon creases, which she cleaned with care and no shortage of awe.

She had just delivered her third granddaughter.

With a jolt, she felt the sudden weight in her pocket. Hiram’s knife. Not under Alta’s mattress, ensuring there would finally be a male heir, but still nestled safely in her apron. Harmless. No sharp object here. Her face flushed. Yes, it was superstition, she knew this on some level. But yet …

“Gran?” The sisters stood stock still, awaiting her pronouncement on this writhing, wriggling being making herself known with her voice and the strength of her will.

“Meet your little sister,” Lidy said. She swaddled the baby in a blanket made of quilt scraps and offered the bundle to Rebecca. But Elsie’s outstretched hands intercepted the petite package, and she settled the baby into her arms as though she had mothered all her short life.

“Welcome to the family,” Elsie whispered, her mouth by the shell-shaped ear. And then, to the perspiring heap on the nearby cot: “She is plumb perfect, Mama.”

Rebecca nodded her solemn agreement, reaching out a tentative hand to touch the body that she had so recently dislodged.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Lidy said. “Get your daddy.”

He had waited long enough.

But when Hiram met his third and final daughter, he broke down.

“No!” He threw himself across Alta’s body. The sounds he made were not human, somewhere between a guttural growl and animal keening. Lidy looked away. She did not approve of her son being so soft. Weak.

But Lidy knew Hiram held plenty of hard-earned grief for this wife he had adored and treasured like the most precious of pearls, laid out with a broken body and—most devastatingly—a broken mind. And now this shameful sadness, this disappointment. Hiram had been so certain that a son would be his lot. Their lot. He had chosen the name: Jason. The Lord is salvation.

So, Lidy did what she knew how to do: she kept going. And she would keep Hiram and the girls—all three of them—going, too. She took the swaddled babe, noiseless now, and handed her to her father. Hiram stared in bafflement and wonder at this girl child with the full head of hair that had dried into a halo of brilliant orange. And she stared back, unblinking.

He held the infant in the palm of his left hand, where she fit in all her miniature perfection. With his right index finger, he traced a cross on her forehead. Seeming satisfied with what he saw there, he nodded.

“Jace,” he pronounced. “The Lord is salvation. But you, little one: you will save this family.”

So Jace it was. Or, in the sternest of situations, Jace Alta Strong, when the flame-haired child needed her full-on, God-given Jesus name to fall into line. Or as an accompaniment to a whack on the back of those chubby legs with Gran’s willow switch.

But everyone called her Shine.



The day was gloriously clear and still. As if the yellow-white ball of the sun burned in the Missouri sky just for him and his little girl—the perfect kind of morning for making shine. Not too hot. And no wind to carry the scent of mash or burning wood, raising the suspicions of any passing prohi or nosy neighbor.

The hardest part was getting out of bed.

“Daddy, rise and shine!” She laughed briefly at her own wit—but then she was jabbing him in the ribs. Hard. She had waited long enough. With her brown work overalls and thicket of orange-red hair in a high ponytail, she resembled nothing so much as a lit matchstick. And as usual, her pants were on fire to get up and at ’em. Where had she come from, this fireball of a girl? Hiram had thought long and hard on the mystery of her: not only different in looks from him and her ma and sisters, but that temperament! Woe unto the person who crossed the youngest Strong. Nope. Best stay on her good side. Even if she was irritating the hell out of you, like she was right about now.

He tried to sling an arm across his eyes to keep out the light, but it was too late. The slant of the sun through a chink high in the cabin wall told him all he needed to know: it was already midmorning. There would be no more sleeping. His daughter would see to that.

“You can grab a biscuit and piece of fried ham on the way out the door,” she went on. “Beck’s got the chores nearly done and Elsie’s churning butter. Gran’s in the garden, and she’s brought in one bushel of pole beans already. If we don’t get to making moonshine, I’m scared of what we might be asked to do round here.”

Of course, his little girl was not so little. Nearly seventeen. She was supposed to have been a boy. His only son, after two daughters. Hiram spent years breaking his back on this piece of Ozark mountain so hard you practically had to shoot the corn seeds into the hillside to get them in the dirt. He’d needed that boy.

But God knew better. Her mama died not long after she was born. But while the Lord took Hiram’s heart, He saw fit to give him a light. Because in the darkness of those days after losing Alta, that baby girl managed to charm him. Pull him out of his funk. Give him purpose again. Even though she was an infant, he saw her spit and vinegar, that spirit that would soon be lighting a fire under them all. His ma said he took a shine to her right away—and that settled it.

Shine.

It was time to check the mash. Hiram and Shine had shoved the barrel full of fermenting grain into the limestone cave exactly two weeks ago and the temperatures since had been steady; not too hot. And if everything looked good, why, they’d light a fire under a kettle-full and get some quality hooch dripping.

“Daddy, get a move on,” Shine said, poking her father’s bare foot hanging out from beneath the thin quilt on his cot. He had built a slant-roofed room off the back of the house so Lidy and the girls could have more room in the cabin. He didn’t need much space with Alta gone.

“Early bird gets the worm. Isn’t that what you told me?”

Hiram grunted, pulling the feather pillow from beneath his head and placing it squarely on top of his face. There was a downside to living with a man who knew how to make good moonshine: he was typically good at drinking it, too. Maybe that wasn’t the right way to put it. Because while Hiram was skilled at socking away the white lightning, he was not that gifted at dealing with the consequences. Sometimes, he didn’t move too quick the next day. Or he woke up on the wrong side of the bed, as Lidy put it. Grouchy. Short with everyone and everything. Bloodshot eyes and breath that smelled like kerosene and was probably about as flammable.

In his younger days, he was quarrelsome when drunk or hungover, ready to pick a fight with his words or finish one with his fists. But these days, the battles he fought were mostly on the inside. He drank when he was sad. Or lonely. Or angry. But he also drank when he felt a glimmer of happy, sitting in the afternoon shade of his cabin, looking over his rough patch of land and watching his girls at work or play. He drank for no good reason. And every bad one.

He missed his woman. Hiram loved his three girls. He was even fond of his hard-as-nails mother. But Alta … ​just the sound of her name made him feel as if he were up in the clouds or on a mountaintop somewhere. And without her, he felt the lows. Dark crevices and hollers, the eddying, swirling deeps of a slow-moving river. A moonless Ozark night without a lantern to find one’s way out of the shadows.

Alta had brought a much-needed softness to his life, with her delicate hands and her book learning. And her quiet faith. While being a preacher’s daughter hadn’t made her rich or above hard work, she had been unfamiliar with the punishing physical labor and loneliness that came with life in these hills. It can eat away at you, that lonesomeness. Especially when there is no respite from the work.

He knew she suffered. Alta went about her chores like a faithful workhorse, caring for the girls, tending the garden, feeding the hens and gathering eggs, cooking three meals a day, preserving, pickling, mending, sewing, washing. But she lost her smile those last few years. And in their narrow bed, she turned her back. She never refused him, but then, Hiram didn’t ask. He kept hoping for an invitation that never came. So he reached for a bottle instead.

Hiram would have loved to treat Alta like the queen he saw her to be, bringing her plump blackberries and bouquets of wildflowers. Letting her dedicate herself to motherhood, instead of taking it on fearfully, reluctantly. Another chore. She should have been delighted by that third pregnancy. Hadn’t he believed it a miracle? Instead, the baby sucked the remaining joy out of her like an opossum draining the contents of a chicken egg—leaving nothing but the near-perfect shell behind.

He didn’t like to think on the shell that had housed her sweet soul … ​until it didn’t. Those long months of staring nothingness from a body that had warmed his heart and his bed for nigh on twenty years. Alta had quietly slipped away one morning, utterly alone, while he had been out hunting.

He didn’t even get to say goodbye.

Sometimes, when he drank, Hiram could feel Alta arrive at the edge of his consciousness. He would get this gnawing feeling in his gut and only the burn of moonshine down his gullet could make it stop, replace it with a glowing, spreading warmth from his belly to the tips of his fingers and toes. That felt like Alta; the old Alta. Warming him, stilling his mind. Helping him forget his pain. Alta, who would never betray him.

But she had been gone close to seventeen years. Shine was living proof of that. And it took more drinking—more often—to find that burning ember inside him that was his love. That made him want to carry on.

God, his head hurt something awful.

The girl put her freckly face right up next to his.

“Damn you, girl, and your endless bouncing and bossing,” Hiram sighed. “And God bless you, too.” He knew he wouldn’t have had the motivation to get out of bed without her pushing and prodding, her constant questions, that burning need to know this and that and every kind of thing. She’d had no patience for sewing and mending like Elsie, hunting and tracking like Rebecca or gardening and gathering like her gran. But Shine loved the still.

She yanked off the pillow. “Let’s go. Time’s wasting!”

They grabbed their hats from a row of five hooks on the front porch and took off for their secret still, a good half mile away as the crow flies. Hiram never used the same route twice, starting along the cow path by the fencerow and doubling back now and again. Shine followed behind, carrying a fresh-cut oak limb Hiram had fashioned into something like a broom, removing the side limbs but keeping the bottom ones, with their full fans of fresh green leaves. She dragged the makeshift sweeper in front of her, back and forth and occasionally to the side, varying the designs in the dry dirt of any game trails they used. Her own specially soled boots covered her tracks handily, but she made sure to erase his, too. Just in case.

Meanwhile, Hiram had the knapsack with the big glass jug and clean mason jars. And a Winchester slung over his shoulder. One couldn’t be too careful out there, what with Prohibition agents and snooping sheriffs and jealous or territorial neighbors. Besides, you never knew when you might come across supper—whether on four legs or on the wing. A man needed to be prepared.

Danger was everywhere. Greed, too. Hadn’t he just warned off Elsie’s beau after he appeared a mite more interested in what the Strongs might be cooking up top of their mountain than in warming the tender heart of his lovesick middle daughter?

At a stand of cedars, Hiram veered off from the fencerow into the woods. A few hundred yards farther and he could hear Kinney Creek, burbling a greeting. And smell it, that clean cool scent that follows a spring rain. Like a speckled trout, fresh out of the water, or mossy green rocks. There was a steep slope that led to the creek, and they soundlessly picked their way among the rocks and roots until they could see the entrance to the cave where the spring came up from deep underground.

Hiram motioned for Shine to hang back, making his way to the cave with caution. He checked the entrance for disturbances, both on the ground and in the screen of brush and limbs they had placed in front of the narrow opening for cover two weeks ago. His back to the cave, Hiram scanned their surroundings, his Winchester at the ready. Satisfied, he put down his knapsack, leaned his gun against the limestone ledge of the cave and motioned to his daughter.

All clear.



Shine ducked into the slender entrance of the cave tucked back into the limestone karst of the hard Ozark hillside. She loved this secret spot. Shine had been coming here as long as she could remember—playing house with Elsie or hide-’n-seek with Becks. They had knelt for great gulping mouthfuls of icy water from the little grotto, collecting in a crystalline pool before it spilled over to form the head of Kinney Creek. The narrow ledge around the cave offered purchase for those who were slim and nimble. And inside? A hiding place like no other for a slip of a girl.

Or a mash barrel.

Because the cave wasn’t for fun anymore. Her daddy had claimed the girls’ hidey-hole for his own, long before Shine and her sisters had outgrown their games. Said it was perfect for hiding his fermenting mash from prying eyes for the two weeks it took to come together. Before distilling time.

Prohibition had come to Missouri—as it did officially across the entire nation—in January of 1920. But some of the bordering states had gotten a serious head start going dry, like Arkansas in 1915. And since Kinney Creek was a stone’s throw from the state line, more than a few Arkansawyers had slaked their considerable thirst with spirits from their northern neighbors. Like the Strongs.

But now the entire country was parched—and had been for nearly a decade.

Shine squeezed herself in behind the mash barrel tucked a few feet back so she could push while her daddy pulled. Once they had the barrel on flat, dry ground, Hiram pried open the lid. The pungent air set free from the mess of fermenting corn smelled exactly like pineapples.

Shine couldn’t fill her lungs up fast enough. She had only ever savored one of the strange, spiky-headed fruits—for Christmas one year, a rare treat in these parts—but she had declared it “divine.” That sweetness in the escaping air was a good sign. A sour odor could mean the mash had gotten some sort of contaminant, maybe even gone bad.

“Smells perfect,” she said.

“And what do you see in there, girl?”

“No bubbles,” said Shine. “So I believe we’re ready to get cooking.”

“I do most heartily agree,” Hiram said. “Pretty soon you won’t need your old man for nothing.”

Shine laughed. But they both knew it was true. She had a knack for this moonshine business. There was a true pleasure in measuring out the corn and sugar, the yeast and barley; in cooking and titrating until you knew with every sense—sight, smell, touch, taste and even the sound and rhythm of the condensing, dripping shine—that you had a