I love Jeannette Walls. The Glass Castle is one of my top five favorite books of ALL TIME, and I am still all tingly when I remember getting my courage to go up to her and talk a bit when she was guest speaking at a library conference in Oakland MANY years ago. But I never got the same level of enjoyment from her books Half-Broke Horses and The Silver Star, so I picked up her latest, Hang The Moon, with a little trepidation.

Best thing I did was remind myself before I started reading that this was a work of FICTION, and I needed to be objective about the book. I was hooked early on reading the story told by a young woman who clearly was strong, resilient, and smart. Sallie Kincaid was sent away by her father “The Duke” after an accident which resulted in serious injury to Sallie’s half-brother Eddie, whose mother (Sallie’s classic evil stepmother) sent eight-year-old Sallie to live with her impoverished aunt in some rural backwater. Sallie’s mother had died during an argument with The Duke, who early on is apparently someone who gets away with everything…as a successful bootlegger. 

After nine years,  when Sallie was seventeen, she was brought back to her father’s house following the death of her stepmother. Seems The Duke needed someone to take care of his son, and Sallie was handy and eager to be back “home.”

Once back home, Sallie begins to fit into the lawless world lived by The Duke, and after some reckless adventures, she becomes truly her father’s daughter, a bootlegger in her own right. What I loved most about Sallie is that she is damaged but not broken, brave despite her being terrified by some of the obstacles she confronts as she navigates life in the first half of the twentieth century in Virginia, a place full of memorable characters. 

Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for this honest four-star review. It’s not The Glass Castle – but then nothing is. And I still love Jeannette Walls.