Booklife Review: Hang the Moon, by Jeannette Walls

Prohibition, moonshine, orphan, corruption, female protagonist, coming of age

Jeannette Walls, author of the riveting memoir of poverty, The Glass Castle, is back with Hang the Moon, a novel set in 1920s Virginia. Sallie is eight years old when her father sends her to live with her impoverished aunt in order to appease her stepmother, his third wife. Nine years later, her stepmother succumbs to influenza and 17 year-old Sallie comes home. Sallie yearns for the attention and approval of her larger-than-life father, known as Duke, who operates as the unofficial mayor and fixer of their small town and county. She successfully fends off Duke’s suggestion that she marry, and earns a probationary position of rent collector in Duke’s business operations.

Hang the Moon is a virtual layer-cake of family secrets that emerge as the novel unfolds. Sallie’s mother was Duke’s second wife, and he takes a fourth before the novel is out. He sired children out of wedlock through affairs as well. A battle for the title of successor to Duke’s empire threads its way through the story, with her stepbrother holding sway for a while and then a formerly absent older daughter. Prohibition blockade-running, a rival moonshiner’s feud, a temperance minister of questionable ethics, and a rogue of a love interest for Sallie all make appearances. The story is perhaps too convoluted, too multi-layered in its secrets and tragic turns for its literary heft, and does not carry the emotional weight of Wall’s memoir, but it is a rollicking read nonetheless.