A heart-stirring life story.
The first woman ever licensed to distill hard liquor in North Carolina uncorks an emotionally charged memoir about traversing family heartache to become the “moonshine mama” of the South.
In the art of making moonshine, “pure heart” refers to the elusive part of the distillation process when fermenting corn mash begins to yield the best part of “platinum whisky.” It also describes the fierce and unwavering love that Ball, founder and owner of Asheville Distilling Company, demonstrates caring for her wheelchair-bound sons, Marshall and Coulton. Born with severe health issues and prone to near-constant respiratory infections, the boys weren’t expected to live into their teen years. Ball refused to let that happen, and she also found a way to resurrect the entrepreneurial spirit her beloved father instilled in her when she was a girl running her own horse shows in Texas. Determined to give her kids a better chance far away from those dusty confines, however, Ball and her devoted husband, Charlie, packed up the family and moved to Asheville. There, the author, who wrote the book with the assistance of veteran co-author Witter, realized that she and moonshine were a perfect match. Invoking the salesmanship learned at her father’s knee, she valiantly began to construct her new company making her own authentic brew. The business soured fast, however, when Charlie’s real estate ventures tanked, and what began as the author’s quest for identity and self-fulfillment quickly became a desperate mission to save her family from dissolution and ruin. “Even now,” she writes, “I find my resentment bubbling up, not for the bad investment—that was the product of the times—but because my husband didn’t listen [to her business advice].” Teetering between success and failure, Ball was able to create a thriving business through sheer hard work and good sense.
A heart-stirring life story.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-245897-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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