Customer Reviews

Moonshine: A Life in Pursuit of White Liquor

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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I grew up not far from Ahoskie, NC, one of the towns
author Alec Wilkinson visits in his book. I was
astonished at the accuracy of his portrayal of the
people and way of life in rural eastern North Carolina.
Wilkinson makes no judgments and draws no conclusions.
He simply writes a wonderfully detailed and honest
portrait of these people and the politics & life of
the moonshiners and revenuers of the swamplands.

In the past few years this rural way of life has
quickly vanished - pressed from the east by the growth
of the tourist industry and overdevelopment of the
Outer Banks, and from the west by the rapid growth
of the Research Triangle. Moonshine has been replaced
by homegrown marijuana. Most small farmers have been
bought out by corporate farms and the small towns have
become bedroom communities for larger metro areas, with
people in Gates and Northampton counties working as far
away as Quantico and Williamsburg, VA.

I've loaned out my copy of "Moonshine" so many times it
is falling apart, but I've never found another book that
so accurately describes the world I grew up in. For my
transplanted Yankee friends here in the Triangle it has been
a great introduction to the rural South.

The first Wilkinson book I read was "Midnights", his
description of a summer spent as the night patrolman
in a small coastal town in Massachusetts. I was struck
by his powers of description, and the honest effort
of researching his subject by spending many long hours
on the job. It is also a fine book.

For anyone interested in a slice of life, or just great
writing, I'd recommend this book without hesitation.

Ken Strayhorn
Chapel Hill NC

I grew up in Tidewater, VA, and I've travelled many of the roads and known the sorts of boys Wilkinson writes about. He really nailed that regional culture, and his ear for dialogue and dialect is finely tuned.

MOONSHINE is the fourth book I have read by Alec Wilkinson, a writer whose skill and use of the language approaches elegant. This short book is a profile of "revenuer" Garland Bunting, a liquor control officer in northeastern North Carolina and covers a period of time stretching from the 1950s through the 80s.
But while Bunting, the agent and the man, is the foundation of the book, he is hardly the be all and end all. Wilkinson garnered his material by spending time with Bunting and while doing so gathered information on the mores and social climate in the small towns of rural North Carolina. He rode along on a still bust, he gives the reader a brief tutorial on the various types of moonshine making as well as various techniques that are used, and he depicts the physical appearance and the feeling of the area so expertly that the reader feels as if he's there.

The material is presented by combining Wilkinson's keen observations with the running conversation of Bunting and his friends. And, as Bunting is an appealing, jocular, funny, and loquacious man, Wilkinson has more than enough to work with.
This material could be made shallow, inconsequential, or uninteresting in the hands of even an average writer, but Wilkinson is so good that his talent takes an interesting story and turns it into a terrific read.

this was a preety good book. It is about this guy named Garland Bunting, who has been engaged in caturing and prosacuting men and weomen. To do so he has droven taxi cabs and whatever else you can think of, to get these people to stop selling elligal liquer.he has learned several tips from huntes, they told him that coons can find a illigal monnshine bussnues any day of the week, so from that day on he decided to start raising coon dog's, so that he could catch the scum of the earth (as so he says) who are selling this illigal liquer. This man is 57 years of age and he is of a medium hieght, he has been doing this type of stuff for over 30 years. In north corolina it is illigal to sell liquer on sunday's so the people who are acaholics are always out looking for liquer on sunday's, and that is whern garland is out busting peoepl most of the time. I would recomend this book to any body that is all I have for know thank you for reading my review.