{"id":4666,"date":"2009-10-19T06:00:49","date_gmt":"2009-10-19T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=4666"},"modified":"2009-10-05T18:27:57","modified_gmt":"2009-10-06T00:27:57","slug":"the-wettest-county-in-the-world-by-matt-bondurant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/the-wettest-county-in-the-world-by-matt-bondurant\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wettest<\/a>No, this has nothing to do with rainfall. Rather, the “wet” refers to moonshine.\u00a0\u00a0The Wettest County in the World<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Matt Bondurant, a fictionalized account about\u00a0the real-life\u00a0Bondurant brothers in\u00a0Depression-era Virginia is\u00a0gritty, gutsy\u00a0and sometimes even gory.\u00a0 It’s narrated\u00a0primarily by\u00a0the youngest brother, Jack, who is in fact, the grandfather of the author.\u00a0 The author, Matt Bondurant, also enlists the help of\u00a0 Winesburg,<\/em> Ohio<\/em><\/strong><\/a> author Sherwood Anderson who started\u00a0his own investigation (in 1934)\u00a0of the\u00a0brothers’ dramatic confrontation\u00a0with\u00a0the county sheriff.\u00a0 In doing so, Anderson was the first to dub Franklin County the “wettest county in the world.”<\/p>\n

The story begins in 1928 when a pair of thieves rob\u00a0Forest Bondurant of his large stash of bootlegging money and end up cutting his throat.\u00a0\u00a0Somehow he manages to reach a hospital 12 miles away.\u00a0 Soon after, two anonymous men appear at the same hospital,\u00a0one with legs totally shattered, the other castrated.\u00a0 Needless to say, they aren’t talking. You get the picture — this is real roughneck country and the Bondurant boys are no angels.<\/p>\n

Bondurant does an excellent job of imagining and portraying the probable lives of his ancestors.\u00a0 It’s not always pretty, but\u00a0it does give the reader a gripping view of their\u00a0struggles to survive during Prohibition in\u00a0the poverty-stricken\u00a0foothills of westernVirginia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, this has nothing to do with rainfall. Rather, the “wet” refers to moonshine.\u00a0\u00a0The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant, a fictionalized account about\u00a0the real-life\u00a0Bondurant brothers in\u00a0Depression-era Virginia is\u00a0gritty, gutsy\u00a0and sometimes even gory.\u00a0 It’s narrated\u00a0primarily by\u00a0the youngest brother, Jack, who is in fact, the grandfather of the author.\u00a0[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[795,861,582,860,306],"class_list":["post-4666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-staff-picks","tag-alcohol","tag-bootlegging","tag-great-depression","tag-moonshine","tag-prohibition"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-1dg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4666"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4711,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666\/revisions\/4711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}