Questions of identity and abandonment haunt the linked stories of this book. At the book's heart lie three generations of women, richly rendered in Holloway's spot-on dialogue and closely observed detail. Each is shaped as much by what she does not have as by her particular gifts of will or beauty or intelligence. Billie, the matriarch, knows all the secrets and calls the shots, as she capably runs a string of businesses across several states. A bold and unrepentant moonshiner, Billie runs whiskey to Chicago in the 1920's (for which she eventually serves prison time), keeps a tobacco farm going in Virginia, and owns the Pioneer Beer Garden in the heart of Hatfield country in West Virginia. There are no small characters in this book. This highly readable collection yields a complex portrait of resilient women and girls as they navigate decades of economic uncertainty and look for ways to blossom in a patriarchal mountain culture.

Leatha Kendrick, author of And Luckier