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The Wettest County in the World : A Novel Based on a True Story
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The Wettest County in the World : A Novel Based on a True Story Paperback - 2009

by Bondurant, Matt

  • Used

Bondurant weaves a compelling tale of violence, desperation, and greed, as three brothers run moonshine in Virginia during prohibition, in this story that is based on a true story about the author's grandfather and two uncles.

Description

Scribner. Used - Good. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages.
Used - Good
NZ$12.64
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Details

  • Title The Wettest County in the World : A Novel Based on a True Story
  • Author Bondurant, Matt
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Condition Used - Good
  • Pages 320
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Scribner, New York
  • Date 2009-12-29
  • Features Price on Product - Canadian
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 8351129-6
  • ISBN 9781416561408 / 1416561404
  • Weight 0.6 lbs (0.27 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.8 in (21.08 x 13.72 x 2.03 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: South Atlantic
    • Cultural Region: Southeast U.S.
    • Geographic Orientation: Virginia
  • Library of Congress subjects Virginia, Suspense fiction
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

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Summary

Based on the true story of Matt BondurantâÈçs grandfather and two granduncles, The Wettest County in the World is a gripping tale of brotherhood, greed, and murder. The Bondurant Boys were a notorious gang of roughnecks and moonshiners who ran liquor through Franklin County, Virginia, during Prohibition and in the years after. Howard, the eldest brother, is an ox of a man besieged by the horrors he witnessed in the Great War; Forrest, the middle brother, is fierce, mythically indestructible, and the consummate businessman; and Jack, the youngest, has a taste for luxury and a dream to get out of Franklin. Driven and haunted, these men forge a business, fall in love, and struggle to stay afloat as they watch their family die, their father's business fail, and the world they know crumble beneath the Depression and drought. 
     White mule, white lightning, firewater, popskull, wild cat, stump whiskey, or rotgutâÈ'whatever you called it, Franklin County was awash in moonshine in the 1920s. When Sherwood Anderson, the journalist and author of Winesburg, Ohio, was covering a story there, he christened it the âÈêwettest county in the world.âÈë In the twilight of his career, Anderson finds himself driving along dusty red roads trying to find the Bondurant brothers, piece together the clues linking them to âÈêThe Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy,âÈë and break open the silence that shrouds Franklin County. 
     In vivid, muscular prose, Matt Bondurant brings these menâÈ'their dark deeds, their long silences, their deep desiresâÈ'to life. His understanding of the passion, violence, and desperation at the center of this world is both heartbreaking and magnificent.

 

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Media reviews

"Bondurant is a nimble writer, especially when it comes to depicting gore and guts. His descriptions of the warped and wounded (a man lying in a hospital bed with "skin blanched like boiled meat; the bedding stained with a yellowish fluid" can leave a reader queasy, but the liveliness of his writing makes it hard for even the most lily-livered to look away.....Bondurant's prose is lyrical.......who can deny the power of a narrative so deeply rooted in childhood imaginings, when a mild and quiet grandfather hung those brass knuckles on the wall?" -- New York Times Book Review

Citations

  • New York Times Book Review, 02/07/2010, Page 24

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