Finalist for the 2022 Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing
Summer 1936, Wilkes County, North Carolina during the great depression. The Flagg family resides in the middle of the Appalachia - one of the hardest hit areas in the country. As the depression drags on the Flagg family watch their molasses business decimated. Jedediah, the family patriarch and his sons Morgan and Ezra struggle to produce a few meager gallons a week. That is until their sister Ava arrives home and takes control of the family business and starts running moonshine. Ava bails out ex-con Bobby Barlow and tells him he is working for the Flagg family now. With threats mounting from rival clans and the local cops breathing down Bobby's neck, he and Ava devise a plan to play them all, one against the other. They don't necessarily do it by legal means but that doesn't bother them. To live outside the law, you must be honest.