This is Leah Erdmann, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today, I’m recommending Hang the Moon by Jeanette Walls.
Many are familiar with Walls largely due to her resonate 2005 memoir, The Glass Castle. Hang the Moon, released earlier in 2023, is a powerful historical fiction set in East Appalachia Virginia during the Prohibition.
You can’t help but root for Sallie Kincaid. Born in a small town to the larger-than-life Duke Kincaid and a mother whom she barely remembers– save for the violent circumstances of her death– Sallie’s wit, resourcefulness, and grit guide her through a tumultuous childhood and into a remarkable lifestyle she never would have anticipated.
When Sallie is eight years old, her father remarries, and her little half-brother, Eddie, is born shortly thereafter. Sallie, whose spirit and pluck resembles that of her father, contrasts dramatically with timid, fragile Eddie. When an attempt of Sallie’s to help Eddie causes an accident, she is cast out from her home and family.
Nearly a decade later, Sallie returns, seeking to reclaim her place in her family and her hometown and, incidentally, winds up at the center of an immense scandal. The people and places she remembered are not at all what she believed them to be, and she’s catapulted into a world of crime and cover-ups, lies and questionable loyalties– but she’s her father’s daughter, and she might have what it takes to take control of the whole operation, and her life, once and for all.
Jeanette Walls again displays her incredible storytelling talents by bringing Sallie Kincaid and the history of bootlegging to life in a mesmerizing and memorable way. Check out Hang the Moon, by Jeanette Walls at the Sioux City Public Library.
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