Hang the Moon By Jeannette Walls | The Miramichi Reader

The author of the best-selling memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls continues to impress readers with her storytelling ability in Hang the Moon, her latest work. Set during the prohibition years in Virginia, it’s the story of Sallie Kincaid, the privileged daughter of Duke Kinkaid, a big man in a small town. He’s the owner of The Emporium, the town’s General Store and central hub, and most everything else. Her own mother died during a violent conflict with Sallie’s father. How and why her mother died is a mystery, one that Sallie doesn’t consider until she’s much older.

“Set during the prohibition years in Virginia, it’s the story of Sallie Kincaid, the privileged daughter of Duke Kinkaid, a big man in a small town.”

Likeable, but tough, Duke is everything to Sallie. And she thinks she’s everything to him. But all that changes when she turns eight and her father remarries. Shortly after, Jane, her stepmother, gives Duke the son he’d always wanted. Since Sallie grew up in a patriarchal culture, she accepts her secondary status in the family. But she continues to hope her father will change his beliefs and expectations. Coddled by Jane, Eddie is weak, and not the son Duke had hoped for. Rather, it’s Sallie who has the spunk, fiery personality and fearlessness that Duke wishes his boy Eddie had.

Over the next four years, Sallie does her best to please Jane, to no avail. By rushing Eddie into a risky situation, Sallie hopes to bolster her stepbrother’s confidence. Unfortunately, when he gets hurt, Jane explodes and blames Sallie for the accident. To keep his wife happy, Duke sends Sallie to live with her mother’s sister, Aunt Faye, who lives on the other side of the county.

Throughout her years of banishment, Sallie holds on to the belief that her father still cares for her. At any moment, she expects to be invited back home.

But an invitation to come home doesn’t materialize until Jane’s death. Sallie is now seventeen. Duke sends Tom, an old friend, to bring Sallie back. She’s disappointed to discover her father’s asked for her return so that she can take care of Eddie, who’s now motherless. Sallie would rather work alongside her father. But there is nothing Sallie can do to gain the respect she would’ve had if she’d been born a boy.

Sallie returns to a community that’s changed. Jane’s death isn’t the only surprise. As the story unfolds, characters’ motivations shift like sand. We discover people are not who they say they are. There is much more below the surface. Walls is a master at creating these multi-dimensional characters who not only delight but surprise, and not always in a good way.

Walls’ vivid descriptions of the land made me stop more than a few times to admire her use of words to paint the picture. And her dialogue is particularly effective. Sallie’s manner of speech put me in the mountains of Virginia in the 1920s, during prohibition, when more than a few skirted the law to get ahead or simply survive. The story’s unexpected tragedies and surprising family secrets stole the show in this entertaining novel. Sallie Kincaid is an unlikely and appealing heroine, one who’s not easily forgotten.

Jeannette Walls graduated from Barnard College and was a journalist in New York. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, has been a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years. She is also the author of the instant New York Times bestsellers The Silver Star and Half Broke Horses, which was named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Walls lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer John Taylor.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; Canadian Export edition (March 28 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 166802103X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1668021033

Diana Stevan

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Diana Stevan likes to joke she’s a Jill of all trades as she’s worked as a family therapist, teacher, librarian, model, actress and sports reporter for CBC television. She’s the author of five novels and a novelette.

Her novels cross genres: A Cry from the Deep, a romantic mystery/adventure; The Rubber Fence, women’s fiction; and Lukia’s Family Saga series, historical/biographical fiction. Based on her Ukrainian grandmother's family’s life in Russia and in Canada, the series is a trilogy covering the years 1915-1943: Sunflowers Under Fire, Lilacs in the Dust Bowl, and Paper Roses on Stony Mountain.

When Diana isn’t writing, she loves to garden, travel, and read. With their two daughters grown, she lives with her husband Robert on Vancouver Island and West Vancouver, British Columbia.