I loved this book from the very beginning. I was sucked in by the daring and charming main character and her larger than life father.

I appreciated how strong most of the women are in this book even if they don't appear to be. Living in this time period would have been difficult, and "needing"a man was how you survived. But Sallie Kincaid knows her own mind and doesn't want a man controlling her, plus she doesn't trust very many of them. As she sees it they cheat, they lie and the women bear the brunt of it.

Through many tragedies Sallie starts to run the Duke's business. I loved that Sallie is just as competent in running the business as her father the Duke and that others see it as well.

Overall this is a fantastic historical fiction novel set during prohibition and the struggles that put on so many families. So many families relied on their production of whiskey and other spirits as payment - and while the Duke knew its worth I feel that Sallie with some help really grew the business in new ways.

If you like strong female characters who break stereotypes and are interested in the prohibition period this book is a sure thing...even if you aren't interested in the history portion its still an amazing read.

I loved Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and was excited to have the opportunity to read an ARC of Hang the Moon. This novel is a rollercoaster of a story about wealth, poverty, prohibition, family feuds and a strong willed girl with big dreams who grows into a powerful woman. Thanks #NetGalley #Scribner

Thank you Scribner Books for this gifted copy!

Jeannette Walls is the author of my absolute favorite memoir - the Glass Castle - so I knew I needed to read Hang the Moon. I was very intrigued by the Prohibition timeframe for this historical fiction book, since I haven't read many (any?) books in that time period. I also loved that the book was centered around a strong, independent woman who was doing "man's work".

I was immediately sucked into the story, but after the first half or so, the pace definitely slowed down. i found myself slightly bored during the second half of the book, But overall, this was still a strong historical fiction read.

Jeannette Walls has done it again!

From the book blurb (and what caught my attention): "A riveting new novel about an indomitable young woman in Virginia during Prohibition. Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody who’d amount to nothing. Sallie had other plans."

Hang the Moon follows the twisted Kincaid family as well as bootlegging in Virginia during the 1920s. Sallie, the main character, is the daughter of an entrepreneur and landlord known as “the Duke.” She is intelligent and complex, someone you can't help but root for from page one until the very end.. Walls shares her strengths and weaknesses. Sallie can be fearless, reckless, stubborn, and outspoken, but her strength comes from her damaged past and her belief that she hears her fathers voice guiding her decisions.

Talk about a twisty tale! The writing is wonderful and the plot is compelling. Hang the Moon is full of lies, deceit and secrets! I was fully engaged in this family drama and the many surprising turns and the surprising revelations within the narrative. This is a tale of tangled of family intrigue, complications, questionable morals, and hidden secrets.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Scribner books for the opportunity to read this page turning, can't put down book! Thanks for taking me into the Virginia backroads during Prohibition, keeping my head spinning with plot twists, doomed romances, and betrayals. I hope Walls continues to write as I will continue to read each and every one!

I love Jeannette Walls. Her previous 3 books were some of my favorite books ever, and this one took SO long to come out. That said, this is the first one not based on her life, and I felt like the story, while an exciting one, fell a bit short as a result.
Glass Castle was an amazing read (as was Half Broke Horses and Silver Star) because they were based on her life. While Hang the Moon was inspired by real-life people, the story was almost too crazy to be believed.
What Hang the Moon did well-there are so many twists and turns, the story was engaging, and the protagonist, Sallie Kincaid, is definitely someone you root for as she comes of age under her dad, "The Duke's" reign as the leader of a Virginia county in the early 20th century. Sallie is whipsmart and thinks on her feet as hurdle after hurdle is thrown at her. Her story is engaging and once the action starts, this novel is hard to put down.
Where Hang the Moon slightly falters is the amount of characters to keep track of and without spoiling too much-the amount of storylines to keep track of. I feel like there have been one too many tangents that Walls throws at us in this book.
That said, for historical fiction fans, or Jeannette Walls fans, this is certainly worth picking up. My thanks to Jeannette Walls, NetGalley and to Scribner for an advanced copy. The book is out now!

I really enjoyed this one! Thank you @netgalley and @scribnerbooks for the gifted digital copy. Great family saga with intriguing characters. Hang the Moon by @the.jeannette.walls publishes on March 27th, highly recommend!

What could have been a great novel - set during a fascinating time in American history - fell very flat. Shallow character development and to make it worse, shallow plot development. It seems everything that could go wrong for our main character does, and life is a series of funerals and bad news as everyone around her dies or leaves. Disappointed to say the least.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book for my honest review.
Another beautifully written book by Jeanette Walls. Keeps you wanting to read after bedtime and I always enjoy strong female characters especially in a historical book. I love how she incorporated this book from real life based on actual facts from during the prohibition period. Highly recommend.

Family drama, fast cars, ax-wielding teetotalers, multi-generational feuds, and moonshine: it’s the Prohibition Era in rural Virginia. Duke Kincaid runs his county with a grip that would have made Tammany Hall proud, like his father before him, and his father before that. Sallie Kincaid is his second daughter, exiled by Duke’s third wife to live with her aunt. Fast forward nine years, and Sallie is recalled to the Big House, as Duke’s residence is known, and thinks she is ready to reclaim her place in the family. Things are even more complicated than she imagined, and she grows from the discarded daughter to a bootleg boss in her own right.

Sallie is a character you can root for, flaws and all. It was a compulsive read, for the most part, and hard to put down. There were a few points where things dragged a bit, and I wondered if this was just maybe one too many calamities to fit comfortably in the story. That being said, Walls points out in the author notes that many of the most ridiculous sounding events are in fact inspired by history and really did occur in bootlegging areas. As you might expect, Jeannette Walls has delivered another strong work that is sure to please historical fiction fans. Definitely recommended for a weekend or a day off - it is hard to put down!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

4.5
An amazing read with a cast of characters that entrance you.
If you are looking for a historical fiction that gives you feeling of hope, this is the one.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

I had such high hopes since I loved The Glass Castle so much. This fiction novel focuses on family and community drama; there was just so so much going on! It was an interesting read, but not as captivating as her nonfiction memoir.

"Women these days are doing all kinds of things---"

This is a perfectly serviceable novel. It offers drama and intrigue, tragedy and humor, thrills and sentimental feelings. And, who doesn't love a story about strong female characters who can kick ass when the chips are down? Book clubs will probably love it.

But . . .

It all felt familiar. Too familiar. Though the addition of the moonshine war was a unique touch, I feel like I've read this book dozens of times. Plucky Gal takes on the world and wins. Yadda, yadda, yadda. This is certainly not a bad book by any means. It just needed some spark to really bring it to life, and set it apart from the dozens of similarly themed books out there. I suspect many will love this one. I just wasn't one of them.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the eARC.

Sallie Kincaid is a young child when her stepmother banishes her from the Big House and sends her off to live with her aunt, with her father - the prominent Duke, the leader of the county - promising to bring her home soon. The years pass before the Duke finally calls for Sallie, in the wake of the stepmom's death. It's now Prohibition and Sallie quickly begins to learn what it means being Duke's daughter, a Kincaid, and who she is meant to be.

This was a fantastic novel. There are so many little twists and turns that the story holds from the first chapter all the way through the last page. Can't wait to recommend it!

Sallie Kincaid has numerous talents that would be helpful to her father and his business. Despite this fact, she plays second-best to her younger brother, who is lauded and encouraged merely for being a boy. He is nothing like Sallie, but is timid, uninterested in business. Sallie strives her entire life to make her father recognize her and be proud, but it's not years of being discounted that she finally makes her own way. Interesting story and characters, and a good read.

This is a moving story of finding one’s place in the world and in their own family. I was entranced by this story and these characters, specially the protagonist. A novel about being a part of something and protecting those who matter while just trying to survive. It was poignant and smart and very well written.

Jeannette Walls is just a superb writer. I remember so distinctly reading The Glass Castle for the first time and absolutely falling in love with Walls' storytelling. I remain in love. Her way of developing characters, how we root for them even when we don't like them very much, is phenomenal. She's just a wonderful storyteller and I'm never sorry to have spent time with her work. I would recommend Hang the Moon to anyone who wants to be engrossed in a great story.

I usually like Jeannette Walls books, but this one was a little harder for me to get into. Once I forced myself to stick with it and read a few chapters, it got better, but it didn't hook me from the beginning like her other stuff has. Still it's a great book, by a talented writer who has an amazing story to share.

Jeanette Walls is the author of outstanding memoirs, most notably The Glass Castle. Her new novel, Hang the Moon, is brilliant, and you should read it. My thanks go to Net Galley and Scribner for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Sallie Kinkaid is born and raised near the turn of the twentieth century in a tiny backwater in Virginia, daughter of its wealthy scion, “Duke” Kinkaid. Her mother has died, and Duke has remarried, and now Sallie has a younger half-brother, Eddie. Sallie is a daredevil, given to occasional recklessness, whereas Eddie has a gentler, more introverted nature, with a love of learning and music. But one day, hoping to awaken some more adventurous aspect of his personality, Sallie takes Eddie out for a ride in her cart, and he is injured. Just like that, Sallie no longer lives with her father; she is cast out to live with an impoverished aunt, and there she remains for nearly a decade.

Sallie is a young woman when she returns, and now she must navigate the shoals of local politics, keeping clear of Duke’s sometimes unpredictable temper. Duke owns nearly every property in the county, and he is deft at doling out favors and keeping the local peace, always in a way that works to his own advantage. Sallie has a hundred questions, some longstanding, and others that develop as she works for her father. However, questions are discouraged in the Kinkaid home. An aunt tells her, “Honey, there are some rocks you don’t want to look under.”

When the local economy is shaken by the unthinkable, Sallie must make some hard choices as she comes into her own. Moonshine has long been an unofficial, yet pivotal way that the local working class makes its living, and when feuds erupt and the government attempts to intervene, Sallie must choose sides. In doing so, she discovers some hard truths about the family she thought she knew.

Walls is at her best here, with a strong, resonant setting, a clear, credible plot, and unforgettable characters. This is the sort of book that one comes back to. Highly recommended.

Sallie is only three years old when her mother dies during a fight with her father. Shortly after Duke marries Jane and finally has a son, Eddy, but Eddy is not like his dad. He would rather read and play the piano than hunt and shoot. When Eddy gets in an accident while playing with Sallie Duke sends Sallie away to live with her Aunt Faye. For NINE years and he sees her once a year at most until Jane dies and then he needs Sallie to help take care of Eddy. Sally is feisty, never wants to get married, and just wants to be her own woman. There are a lot of secrets in this book to the point that I started rolling my eyes. I could hear a voice in my head saying, "but wait, there's more!" The writing was fine. There were a lot of characters but I had no problem keeping track of them but I would have liked more character development and fewer secrets.

Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner for providing me with a digital copy.

Requested this book from NetGalley because Jeanette Walls’ memoir “The Glass Castle” was a great read. I had not read any of her fiction prior to reading “Hang the Moon”. This is a historical fiction set in the south during the time of Prohibition. Part coming of age, part sweeping family saga, I wish one or the other had been done well. In fact the middle was so haphazard with bullets from the action scenes flying all over the place. One of the main characters falls by the wayside until the very end of the book. Overall, this book was just ok.
Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for giving me a digital ARC.