Lawless

by Matt Bondurant

Based on the true story of Matt Bondurant's grandfather and two granduncles, The Wettest County in the World is a gripping tale of brotherhood, greed, and murder. The Bondurant Boys were a notorious gang of roughnecks and moonshiners who ran liquor through Franklin County, Virginia, during Prohibition and in the years after. Forrest, the eldest brother, is fierce, mythically indestructible, and the consummate businessman; Howard, the middle brother, is an ox of a man besieged by the horrors he witnessed in the Great War; and Jack, the youngest, has a taste for luxury and a dream to get out of Franklin. Driven and haunted, these men forge a business, fall in love, and struggle to stay afloat as they watch their family die, their father's business fail, and the world they know crumble beneath the Depression and drought.

White mule, white lightning, firewater, popskull, wild cat, stump whiskey, or rotgut -- whatever you called it, Franklin County was awash in moonshine in the 1920s. When Sherwood Anderson, the journalist and author of Winesburg, Ohio, was covering a story there, he christened it the "wettest county in the world." In the twilight of his career, Anderson finds himself driving along dusty red roads trying to find the Bondurant brothers, piece together the clues linking them to "The Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy," and break open the silence that shrouds Franklin County.

In vivid, muscular prose, Matt Bondurant brings these men -- their dark deeds, their long silences, their deep desires -- to life. His understanding of the passion, violence, and desperation at the center of this world is both heartbreaking and magnificent.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Crime, True Crime, Book Club, Mystery

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Bridget · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, I watched this movie and couldn't get it out of my head, so I completely went out of my genre of reading and bought the book! At first I thought this might be a little mature for me ha ha but once I got used to the writing I was glued. It's like a school book you have to dissect. The who, what, where, whys of what they were thinking? There's so little said about each character or about a scene that you find your self more touched or more fascinated, it's weird, less is more! I felt so attached to each character and even ones that weren't in the movie. Like poor Emmy, I felt so bad for her, always in mourning but then almost never getting attention from her brothers just living day to day cleaning up and cooking. I just wanted so bad for Jack to buy her something or do something to make her smile. He seemed like he was the closer one to her.
The bond between Maggie and Forrest, this mutual acceptance for each other, not expecting anymore or any less.
So much to think about..
This is a good book for discussion, I can't wait til my friends and family read it so I have someone to break down all the parts with! Ha ha I think I'll be thinking of 'The Bondurant Boys' for a while now :'(

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the main story of this book. The main story follows three brothers who are bootleggers and general shady characters in the early 1900s. They grew up as poor farmers in a region that became known for moonshine production during prohibition, and soon became involved themselves. Some of the more interesting pars of the book came from seeing how the three brothers were each differently suited (or unsuited in some cases,) to such a life.

However, the book really fell apart where it tried to skip back and forth to a story taking place ~5 years ahead of the other one. In the second story a journalist was trying to find information about the bootleggers of the area and having trouble figuring out what actually happened. The problem is that the second story added almost nothing to the original or the overall book. Those pages could have been much better spent developing the brother characters (who suffer from shallow characterization for much of the book.)

[Taury · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant is a historical fiction novel set during the Prohibition era in Franklin County, Virginia. The novel is based on the author’s own family history, Bondurant brothers—Forrest, Howard, and Jack—who run an illegal moonshine business in the rural South. Rural south moonshine business was full of lawlessness and corruption which included greed and murder. There was a tough relationship between local bootleggers and law enforcement, everyone was a “bad guy”, tough, and untrustworthy. This lifestyle is rough and takes resilient men who can survive a dangerous world where loyalty and survival are the only way to survive. The pace is slow and lacks dialog. The story jumps back and forth 5 years ahead of the other. Seemed to be a second story which included a journalist. Seemed to be added into story and didn’t add to anything.

[Andrew Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good page turner, ultra-violent right from the opening paragraph. Running stills did not make for a glamorous life, not for these guys anyway.

There’s a second narrative featuring Sherwood Anderson investigating the scene down there, set a few years later than the main story. It is peppered with vignettes of his encounters with other literary figures. I guess I could agree with some reviewers that the subplot wasn’t necessary, though I didn’t mind it at all. But as far as the narrative structure being confusing or as a NYT review said “causing complication for the reader”—-please give me a break already. It’s the same setting with the same characters five or so years apart. I wonder what that reviewer would say about something like Gravity’s Rainbow, or (sticking with the neighbourhood) The Sound And The Fury.

[Kevin Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, it looks like I am in disagreement with others who have rated this book. The reason is two-fold. I am a fan of bourbon and whiskey; both historically and practically. I am also a fan of historical fiction that takes place in the southern US states - particularly Kentucky. How I got there is not important but this book speaks to me as though it was written for me.

It is a well written story about brothers who made moonshine whiskey in Kentucky and were feared by both their competition and the law. The story is fiction but it is fitted into the known historical facts available to the author for the time and the county in which the story takes place. The author is the grandson of one of these infamous brothers. He has returned to his home place and researched his family's past to put this story together.

Five stars for a well written story about Kentucky Bourbon and the people who made it.

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

This “historical” book is about Prohibition in the 1930s - “prevention by law of the manufacture & sale of alcohol, especially in the US between 1920 & 1933”.

In the “Prohibition era” moonshine flowed freely through Franklin County, Virginia, and few bootleggers were more productive & violent than the Bondurant Boys—3 brothers ran tactics throughout the county.

The 3 Bondurant Brothers fermented “moonshine” - Forrest (eldest & leader), Howard (the roughest) & Jack (youngest).

Note found during read - “nearly 100 percent of the population was illegally trading in liquor. Sherwood Anderson (novelist during prohibition) called it - the wettest county - of the United States, positing that even after Prohibition had ended, the moonshine continued to flow.”

Book is used for the “Lawless” movie - it’s screenplay matches book well. I enjoyed both.
The film was released on 8/31/2012...

Lawless Movie Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csLbN...

Fire And Brimstone -- Lawless movie/theme Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHVG1...


It’s a surprise to see ratings/reads were < 5,000 & not better.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started listening to this book in audio format, and while I thought the narrator was fantastic, I don't think the novel's structure lends itself to audio. The story of the Bondurant brothers running moonshine during Prohibition is interwoven with the story - several years later - of reporter Sherwood Anderson trying to uncover the Bondurants' involvement with the Moonshine Conspiracy in Franklin County. The shifting of the narrative was confusing in audio, so I switched to the printed text, but in the end I've decided my real problem was with the author's decision to include Sherwood Anderson as a narrative device. I found his character distracting to the main storyline, and I would have preferred more focus on developing the Bondurants. Still, I liked the author's lyrical prose and found that despite the poverty and violence in the story, there was a hopeful tone, less depressing than other GritLit I have read recently. Maybe because the main character Jack Bondurant is a dreamer or maybe just because this story carries with it the aura of family legend.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Bondurant were not gangsters like that of the suburbs of New York during the prohibition. If anything they were hard workers and if they knew there was a profit the people could make they tried to survive from it.
Considering the unrelenting and unforgiving harsh climate and landscape they lived amongst and around 1918 the people died and lived through some very brutal times, epidemics, they had to be tuff and survive financially with what came their way. There was some very nasty official people who wanted to capitalise on the last days of the prohibition and the Bondurant clan was not having it, they would not bent and fold. I think the word gangster is not a fitting description, they were a generation of family who would not lay down, some had a hell of a fight in them, they did go against the law yes, but who wasn't in those days trying to profit from Moonshine and tobacco.
The grandfather of this story set in stone mentality and by example ways of a Bondurant man, of a hard working man, they grafted, toiled and sweated like many people of their time.
A memorable family that worked well in this story.

This was an engaging and enjoyable read, a look at a true family from history.
The author done well in describing the landscape, the people and the world of those days. It was enjoyable to read of the protagonist writers friendship with Hemingway and his meeting with Faulkner in the story.

"That next summer (1918) the Spanish Lady Flu epidemic swept through the southeastern states, finding its way into the deepest hollows and mountain ridges of Franklin County. The county went into self imposed quarantine. Generations of families had known the ancient periodical ravages of sweeping illness like diphtheria, influenza, smallpox, and the certain knowledge of deaths deliberate visitation ground all activity to a standstill as families huddled together in their homes. Jack's father, Granville Bondurant, closed up his vacant general store, itinerant mendicants and blasted road-men his only occasional customers. Families relied on the saved stores of food stockpiled in root cellars, cool spring houses. The Brodies who loved across the broad hill stopped coming down the dirt road by the house, as did the Deshazos, a black family that lived a half a mail off. The pews of Snow Creek Baptist Church stood cockeyed empty and hooded crows roosted in the crude lectern."

"As a teenager Forrest would rise before dawn and top tobacco and pull suckers till dinner, then walk four miles through Snow Creek Hollow to a lumber camp and work a crosscut saw until supper. The next day he would get up and do it again, seven days a week, substituting cattle work, apples, chestnuts, hog butchering, haying, busting clods, harrowing, plowing, carpentry, depending on the season, need, and paying customers. With Howard he took loads of walnuts and apples to Roanoke in oxcarts, and tobacco to Harrisonburg, Martinsville, and Richmond, where he slept on pallets stacked high with pressed tobacco hands in the darkness of the warehouse. He began to drink occasionally, accepting the grimy jar as it was passed hand over hand, though Forrest never took any pleasure in it other than that it helped him put his head down and get his eyes screwed tight long after everyone else had gone to sleep. People moved around him as if he were a wild dog in the street."

"(1934) What everyone in the county did talk about was tobacco. It hung on the lips of men like salvation, it was as if they believed if they repeated the word enough,'bacca, the chanting, the incarnation, the sound of it would bring a strong crop and suddenly Franklin County would flower in prosperity. That summer Anderson watched as men, young boys and girls walked the rows of tobacco for hours in the devastating heat, seemingly endless rows that stretched over the hills, stooping to pull tobacco worms off the stalks and leaves, fat white grubs several inches long that writhed in your palm when plucked, their tiny black heads waving, beak-like mouths seeking purchase."

"(1930) The last of the rain, in early April, gave way to the long waste of drought, blazing blue skies, cloudless, sparkling with dust. The early shoots withered in a matter of weeks, the bony cattle following the thin licks up the creek beds, planting their muzzles deep in any soft patch of mud. Fish crowded in the deep eddies and boys waded in to grab mud cats and carp with their hands. Headlights sweeping over a field at night found them alive with glowing eyes as packs of deer came down from the mountains desperate for water, parched and defiant. The old superstitions raised their hoary heads and traveling through stands of woods in Franklin County that summer you would occasionally find a snake hanging from a tree, nailed by the head, an ancient appeal to the wood gods to bring the rain back. Fields of yellow, stunted tobacco with untapped blooms covered the county. Red clay surged to the surface through scattered weeds, the powder rising into the air on no wind at all, like transpiration, the dry sucking up the dry, and so a fine slit of clay was worn in every crease, in the eyes of dogs, in the skillets of fatback and pintos. A matter of minutes after you swept the floor clean you could draw in it with your finger. Men stood with their hands in their pockets, heads low, scuffing their boots, dreaming of sudden, angry cloudbursts. They knew when the tobacco died the shooting would begin. By August even the children grew quiet, beyond listless, and wandered down to the dry creeks in small groups, daydreaming of ice. In the summer of 1930 women all over the southern part of the state of Virginia stood in their dusky kitchens and wept."

review also @ http://more2read.com/review/lawless-by-matt-bondurant/

[W.H. Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some people have all the luck: they have fathers, grandfathers, uncles, all of whom have a back-story, something to talk about down the years, something out of which a writer can make a really good story.

Not me. I seem to have come from an endless line of people who didn’t raise the dust, didn’t make a headline. Except once, when I was about eight, and I heard my mother and father talking. My father was in trouble with the police. It was in the papers. He had been fined 5 shillings for a parking offence. That and my three speeding offences – and oh yes, a careless driving – is all we seem to have amassed as a family. Not much story in any of that.

Yet Matt Bondurant got a hint when he was into middle age that there was a story, something about his family. And though, save for newspapers, the documentary evidence was thin and the majority of those alive in the 1920s and 1930s had either passed on or forgotten the events of the time, he has managed to squeeze out a narrative from what he can find. And where there’s nothing, he’s added his own interpretation, and has made a novel out of the rags and tatters of his own family’s history. His grandfather and his two great uncles are the major figures in this violent tale.

‘Lawless’ is a story about Prohibition and its companion the Great Depression. We know all about Prohibition from all the gangster stories that have been written or filmed: we know about Capone and the Mob in all the great cities.

But at this time, over in Virginia, in a poverty stricken rural landscape where perhaps for all time past there had been a Great Depression, up in the mountain valleys with their cold running springs, the illicit manufacture of ‘moonshine’ – whisky from the grain, brandy from the fruit - which had gone on for perhaps a hundred years, perhaps even longer, now blossomed into a major industry though it continued to be manufactured in quite simple fashion.

And like many other farming folk, the Bondurant boys, Forrest the eldest, Howard, returned from the war, and young Jack, have stills running and they’re producing White Lightning or White Mule Moon or Stump Whisky or Mountain Dew or Squirrel Whisky – or maybe all of them at one time.

But there is great money involved in all of this - there is a suggestion that ninety per cent of families in Franklin County were in some way involved in the trade – so that now senior officers in the local county administration – the County Attorney and the Sheriff - decide to have their share of it, imposing a tax on the stills, demanding a tax for the shipment of the liquor, destroying the stills of non-payers and relentlessly pursuing those shipping their wares. Ruthless? Men are shot, beaten, emasculated, their testicles placed in a jar. Decidedly ruthless.

Some have objected that the story line is obscure at times when the author hops from one year to another. True. You have to concentrate. And some are unhappy about the intrusion of the writer Sherwood Anderson into the story’s flow. He came down to Franklin County in 1934 to find out about what was then known as The Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy. I’m sympathetic to a degree with these critics.

Yet I cannot deny that this may some day come to be regarded as a great novel. The reader has a lot of work to do. He cannot easily skim Mr Bondurant’s narrative. He needs to take time, to ponder it and enjoy its lyrical qualities which so uplift this book. Descriptions of newly distilled liquor; of the workings of a rural sawmill; of a frost-wrinkled land; of whole tobacco drills wilting in a savage summer heat; of lean men and women, poor but stoical – all of these elegantly expressed images, make for a book to return to.

I greatly admire ’Lawless.’

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully gritty tale about the home-spun moonshining business during the prohibition years in Franklin County, Virginia. The book tells the story of the Bondurant brothers, three men who lust for money, pine for love, or just yearn to get by. The writing was so lush that I felt as if I were in Franklin County as the events were happening.

Unfortunately, the book was divided (unevenly in my opinion) between past and further past, and it was difficult to determine what was happening when. In the past storyline, a reporter/author, Sherwood Anderson, travels to Franklin County to discover the truth about the death of the Bondurant men. Rather than enhancing the plot, this broke the pacing of the action and actually took away from the depth of the characters.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blurbs comparing Bondurant to Cormac McCarthy do a disservice to Bondurant, whose vision is much more compassionate, humane. I've read several McCarthy books, and except for Suttree, they tend to leave me feeling impressed with the prose but otherwise numb or slightly ill. Bondurant's novel left me feeling enlightened, as well as entertained. He's certainly far, far better as depicting lives of women. His prose is very rich without turning into sludgy baroque, as McCarthy can. Here's a sample of Bondurant:

“He thought of the old men clustered in general stores, on the front porces of the filling stations, the haggard old crabs at the quilting bee, the thin spittle of bitterness bubbling on their lips, their razor eyes, the angry shaking of their bobbing skulls; they relive and echoing path of past transgressions, careless insults, lost animals, a horse cart disappearing over the hill, crying in the tall corn of summer with a dress around their neck, desperate curses, starlight on an open wound. They only chew on the cud of their past. That’ll never happen to me, Jack thought as he watched the shuckers. Not to me.”

I give this novel 4 1/2 stars. Look forward to reading more by this talented writer.

[Liz Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Bondurant brothers, prohibition, and bootlegging. This story written by the grandson of one of these brothers was great. Each one of the brothers are so very different yet alike in so many ways. Personally, I was so drawn to Forrest. He was a man of very few words yet the words that he did speak were so profound. Howard always seemed like the brother that was on the verge of something whether it be greatness or madness. Then there was Jack. Just trying to make a name for himself while being in the shadows of these two older brothers.
The story was so great and well put together. I think Matt did a great job mixing the actual facts with the fabrications to try to fill in the blanks. What a great story to have to pass down to your family as history.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel was one of the most gripping reads I have had in the last year. The reason was not because I did not know how it ends. That is hinted at almost from the beginning. It was not because I have a personal connection to Franklin County, VA or moonshining in particular. It was because Matt Bondurant has created a novel where the characters literally breathe and the reader finds themselves caught up, and invested in, the details of their lives.
I would have given this text five stars but for two things. The novel is full of a few too many literary pretensions, not using quotation marks being one, and I also did not care for the frame story involving the writer Sherwood Anderson. Mr. Bondurant has a PhD, and I half bet his dissertation was on Anderson. Although that frame was well written, and had some interesting elements, it detracted from the more important part of the novel, and based on reviews I have read on Amazon, confused a lot of readers. I for one did not find his literary tricks and the subplot involving Anderson confusing, I just did not care for them.
However, I think this is a novel of surprising depth, and wonderful characterization. Mr. Bondurant has succeeded powerfully in crafting three memorable, and three dimensional, characters in the Bondurant brothers: Forrest, Jack, and Howard. My book club read this text, and everyone agreed that the characterization was one of the strongest aspects of the novel. Mr. Bondurant has done something that is hard to do. He has taken people who, if we knew them in real life, most of us would not want to be associated with and made their humanity so overwhelming that we see ourselves in them. This should be the aim of every good writer, and in this novel he meets that goal.
Despite what many think, this is a novel that begs rereading and discussion. There is much more depth than meets the eye and the careful reader will find some powerful motifs and moments in this text. The character of Jack (the author's grandfather) is one such example. Throughout the text Jack struggles to articulate the world as he sees it in his mind. He has beautiful and profound observations, but like many men I know, he cannot articulate them in a manner that others can relate to. Seeing the interactions between him and his oldest brother Howard (who sees this in Jack and responds to it in his own quiet way) is one of the most touching things I have come across in a book.
The harsh reality of everyday life is powerfully brought home in the text, and once you finish it be prepared to feel like a big wimp. Our grandparents and great grandparents had hard lives. They had real problems. The powerful evocation of time and place in this novel easily demonstrates that!
I will read this book again. I can give it no higher praise!

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not rating this 1 star because Matt Bondurant is a bad writer. He's not. And I like that he wrote a novel based on the lives of his grandfather, two great-uncles and the family stories about them, as well as the local legends about their indestructibility, especially that of Forrest Bondurant. I picked this up on audio because I knew this was based on a true story that I found intriguing.

The reason I'm giving it 1 star is because I hated pretty much every minute of my work commute while I listened to this. It's sheer misery from start to finish, with no real bright points in the mundane, depressing, violent lives of the protagonists.

The focus is mostly on Jack Bondurant, the author's grandfather in real life, and as portrayed in the novel, the least interesting of the brothers. For a portrayal of his grandfather, it was decidedly unsentimental, even negative. I certainly didn't like him. I wish there had been more focus on Forrest. I suppose the author wanted to keep him mysterious, as maybe he was in life. I don't know, but his portions of the story were more interesting to me than any others. Keeping the focus on Jack was unconventional, which was maybe what the author was going for, but it didn't make for enjoyable reading (or listening, in my case).

I know a lot of people hated the jumps forward in time, where Sherwood Anderson was trying to track down a story on a famous female moonshiner and stumbled on the Bondurant story. I actually didn't mind these breaks. The author seems to be fascinated by Sherwood Anderson, and I wonder if I would understand why he wrote the book the way he did if I were well-versed in the writing of Sherwood Anderson. I suspect I would.

In the end, there was no romance, heroism or adventure in this story about a legendary trio of brothers who were moonshiners during Prohibition. I'm sure that was intentional, but darn it, it wasn't very fun.

[Bridget · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had an Advance Readers' Edition of this title, and I was looking forward to reading it. The story is that of the Bondurant brothers, who were involved in moonshine making and distribution during the Prohibition in Franklin County. I find this time in American history to be quite interesting, both from the temperance viewpoint and the viewpoint of those making/selling/smuggling liquor.

Maybe this is a good book, but if it is, I didn't read far enough into it to find out. The Prologue was a bit much for me, before I ever even got into the story, and once I started the story, it just seemed to clumsily written to hold my interest. The characters had no redeeming qualities, nor were they at least entertaining (sometimes characters that have no redeeeming qualities are saved (for me) by being interesting or entertaining). And the story seemed terribly disjointed, always making me feel that I had forgotten to remember something from a chapter or a few pages prior. But then I would go back to check, and I hadn't missed anything.

I would not recommend this book. It had promise as far as the story line goes, but did not deliver.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is an undeniable romance about the world of moonshining. As a Kentuckian, I was raised on stories about it, and I remember listening many times as a kid to Robert Mitchum's "Ballad of Thunder Road" (not to be confused with Springsteen's "Thunder Road"). My cousin Bill once showed me some moonshine that he had purchased in a traditional Mason jar and demonstrated for me how the way that bubbles form when you shake it supposedly lets you tell whether it is poison.

So I was interested to run across this story about a family of moonshiners in the mountain country of Virginia where the poverty and culture is much the same as in the mountain country of Kentucky on the other side of the Cumberland Gap. The book is undeniably well written. The characters are well drawn. Each of the Bondurant brothers has a distinctive personality. But in the end, for me, they came off as violent rednecks with little about them that was interesting or admirable. They moonshine for money, and perhaps they didn't have much choice when the tobacco crop failed and the Depression hit, but they all seemed to be singularly lacking in imagination, not striving for anything more than a better suit of clothes, a faster car and a pretty mountain girl to squire around. Nor were they defending a traditional way of life, and they seemed to have no appreciation of the natural beauty of the area where they lived. So I never had any sympathy for them. The cops may have been corrupt, but it was bad guys against bad guys. There were no heroes here.

Then there was the odd way that Sherwood Anderson was worked into the story. I guess it is part of history that after writing Winesburg, Ohio, Anderson moved to western Virginia, worked as a journalist and had an interest in moonshining, but he always sits on the outside of the main story here. He could have been eliminated from the book without losing anything.

[Jonathan Briggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

A JON AND HIS MA BOOK CLUB SELECTION

All right, NEW RULE: Cormac McCarthy and Irishmen are exempt; everyone else must use quotation marks.

Some writers think incorporating fantastic levels of violence and jettisoning dialog punctuation will win them favorable comparisons to America's greatest living author. They are correct, in fact, but all that proves is that a lot of critics are knuckleheads. Knocking off Dan Brown probably wasn't much of a challenge for Matt Bondurant (or anyone else with a working command of his ABC's) in writing his first novel, "The Third Translation," so he set his sights on loftier literary game for his follow-up, a tale of his bootlegging ancestors. "The Wettest County in the World" is a novel as generous in its bloodletting as it is stingy with its quotation marks.

In 1934, author and journalist Sherwood Anderson comes to Franklin County, Va., to do a magazine piece on the thriving moonshine trade. "Production didn't end in 1933 with the repeal of Prohibition: To avoid the heavy taxes on legal distillation, people still made their own or brought it in on rumrunners off the coast, but now that Prohibition was over people wanted to hear more about that supposed frontier period." It may be armchair entertainment for the people back East, but in the mountains of Virginia, Anderson finds, it's a deadly serious and bloody business. As the editor of The Roanoke Times warns him, "There's only two things up in them Franklin County hills for those who are looking: stump whiskey and free ass whippin's." (Quotation marks are mine.) Cross the wrong people, and a man might find his own gonads floating in a jar of shine like ice cubes. It's all in the game, yo.

Anderson is stymied in the pursuit of his article by the stone-faced locals, taciturn and standoffish to strangers. But we the readers are privy to the inside story.

It goes back to 1918, when Franklin County is being decimated by the Spanish influenza pandemic. Young Forrest Bondurant reassures his kid brother, Jack, that the family will be OK. "'Nothing can kill us,' Forrest said. 'We'll never die.'" That invulnerability doesn't extend to most of the females of the family. Shortly after Forrest makes his proclamation, the boys' mother and two of their three sisters succumb to the flu and die. It's the kind of incident that's apt to make a boy ornery, and Forrest and Jack grow up "no 'count" to run moonshine with their older brother, Howard. "Everyone respected them, even if that respect was steeped in fear and awe that at almost any time these men might have a pistol and a hundred dollars wadded in their pockets."

Howard gets high on his own supply, trying to drown the personal trauma of World War I in a flood of corn liquor. Jack is sensitive, prone to visions. He's somewhat weak but a thinker, the ambitious one, the one with plans. And Forrest? Well, Forrest is the badass.

How badass is Forrest? When he gets his throat cut by a pair of crackers trying to rob his roadhouse hangout, he sits in the snow and bleeds out for a while, then, once again asserting his own immortality, he walks it off.

Now there are different types of moonshine. The Bondurants traffic in a pretty high grade of illicit liquor. "Some of the stuff was excellent, a layered, complex taste with several discernable characteristics." Other brands carry more of a kick:

"He took a mouthful and ran it over his tongue, his throat constricting and something almost solid lurched in his chest, like something alive, bringing salt to his eyes, and as he swallowed all the solids in his head cavities liquefied and snot ran freely from his nostrils."

The backwoods booze biz is going fine until the local lawmen want a piece of the action in a countywide protection racket allegedly run by the commonwealth's attorney, Charles Carter Lee. "Everybody pays, everybody gets along, we all make money." Except Forrest isn't the type to get along.

"It amazed Forrest that so many men seemed to wake up in the morning needing some kind of beating or another, men saying and doing fantastic things for the sake of getting another man to smash his face. Perhaps it was the aftermath, the burning humiliation of it they sought, when the aching morning came and they rolled over in the dirt and felt their mouth for teeth or lightly touched the split ear, the face in the rearview mirror swollen and crusted with blood. Forrest figured if these men wanted it he might as well give it to them."

The Bondurants are determined to remain stubbornly independent in the face of a much bigger and better armed criminal operation: the government, which is more than ready to test Forrest's invulnerability to the limit.

After I finished the first chapter, I told Ma I thought I was gonna like this one, only to discover that she had raced through the book like Robert Mitchum on Thunder Road and was already nearing the end. "I was hooked after the first page and a half," she said. "He is earning his comparison to Cormac." I have to differ with her a little. It's a fine book and a great read, no argument there (and it should make a helluva movie, provided the Weinsteins kept their porky paws off it), but it's slightly compromised by Bondurant's idol worship. Trying to write like Cormac McCarthy is fruitless and a fool's game. Cormac writes at a level that's damn near otherworldly, and that has nothing to do with quotation marks. He belongs in a category of one, and when he breaks the rules of writing, it feels like the rules need to be changed. When Bondurant plays around with tense shifts in mid-sentence, it doesn't add artistic sheen to the text, it just feels like editorial malpractice. "Howard turns and strides down to the sawmill site and caught a ride. ... Men slapped him on the back, poke his fat biceps, telling stories that he doesn't quite hear. ... Howard opens a fresh jar and sent the lid spinning off into the darkness."

Bondurant was lucky enough to be born into a story this good, and I assume it has personal meaning for him and his family. It would have been better served if he hadn't tried so hard to write it like someone else would. Matt Bondurant should focus more on writing like Matt Bondurant.

And next time, I want to see proper punctuation.

[Adele · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is kind of muddled. Bondurant does not seem clear on whether he wants the book to be a compilation of family stories and legends, a researched novelization of history, or just fiction inspired by actual events. Any of these could have been fine but the different approaches do not work well together. I have seen the movie Lawless and enjoyed it, though it was also nothing that special. I think the movie made a good call in eliminating the Sherwood Anderson story-line, which was boring and didn't really add anything. The book did provide much more background on the brothers and their childhood, and helped explain some of the scenes in the movie that hadn't made sense to me.

[Nev · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s kind of impressive that a story about crime and bootlegging and shootouts managed to be this boring. I did not like Matt Bondurant’s writing at all. It never fully immersed me in the story and even at the end I didn’t feel like I really understood the characters. And switching between the story of the brothers in the past and the author in the future added absolutely nothing.

Also, fuck books that don’t use quotation marks.

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and makes me want to read more on the Bondurant boys but the time jumps with the journalist were a bit annoying.

[Szeee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uramatyám, mik lapulnak meg nekem évekig a könyvespolcomon!
Épp pár napja volt a "témázó" bloggerek körében téma a két tojás, azaz hogy egyes könyvek esetleg hasonlítanak egymásra, meg hogy talán "nincs új, a nap alatt" stb. :P Én meg pont ezt a könyvet olvastam, amihez foghatót én még soha nem olvastam, se témájában, se stílusában. Persze ennek az is lehet az oka, hogy nem olvastam még elég könyvet, mert azt mondják Bondurant stílusa kicsit C. McCarthy-éra hajaz, de én vele még nem találkoztam. Mindenesetre ez a stílus nő létemre is totál levett a lábamról.

A téma egyébként a 20-as 30-as évek Amerikájában hever, New Yorktól kicsit délre, Virginia államban, ahol a szesztilalom idején virágzik az illegális szeszfőzés és csempészés. Imádom ez a korszakot, a gengsztertémát is. Bár ezek a fickók, akikről szó van, nem gengszterek, hanem déli redneckek: iskolázatlan, alapvetően földműveléssel foglalkozó parasztok. Franklin megye legnagyobb whiskeyfőzőivé és szeszcsempészévé válik a három Bondurant fiú. Pedig annyira nem különlegesek ők, de így hárman alkotnak egy olyan triót, akik képesek "vinni valamire". A főügyész, a sheriff és egyéb elöljáróságok megpróbálnak pénzt szedni a csempészektől, ígérve, hogy cserébe szemet hunynak az illegális kereskedés felett, de olyan Isten nincs, hogy a Bondurantok fizessenek azért, hogy bűnözhessenek... Így persze magukra szabadítják a megye nagykutyáit.

A spanyolnátha által megcsonkított családban Howard, aki a szeszt főzi, a legidősebb testvér. Hatalmas ember, méretével és erejével eleve egy tekintélyes jelenség, bár kevésbé karakán és rafkós, mint öccse, a mindent túlélő Forrest, aki rátermettségével és vállalkozó hajlamával tűnik ki a megyében. Vendéglőt, benzinkutat, fűrésztelepet üzemeltet és persze illegálisan teríti a szeszt. És bár fizikuma nem számottevő, de ha tökösségről van szó, akkor nem kell a szomszédba mennie. A legfiatalabb testvér, Jack csodálja bátyját, szerinte Forrest elpusztíthatatlan, mert bár átvágják a torkát, lelövik, farönkök tarolják le, ő túléli és csinálja tovább. Jack, a legifjabb Bondurant a legérzékenyebb közülük és bár előfordul, hogy hibázik a közös bizniszben, a bátyjai mégis teljes vállszélességgel állnak ki mellette mindvégig, mert ez az, ami a regény fő témája: a testvériesség, a szótlan összetartás tűzön-vízen át. A családi kötelék olyan kapocs náluk, ami minden felett áll. Buzog ugyan a tesztoszteron, folyik a pancsolt whiskey, a szó kevés, de egy pillantással, mozdulattal megértetik egymással, hogy most tenni kell, most menni kell, most ütni kell... Én valahol bírom ezt a fajta férfiasságot és hiába a törvényszegés, a kosz, az alkohol, az izzadt arcok, a bőr redőiben megülő vörös por, én bírtam ezeket a srácokat, mert volt bennük valami ősi és eredendő tulajdonság, ami vonzott. Talán a családom egyik részét és a gyerekkori nyarakat idézi a vidék, a föld illata, a rekkenő hőség, az aszály, na meg a bunyós, a vállalkozó, meg az érzékeny... Talán...

Talán azért bírta ezt az egészet ilyen jól megidézni az író, mert ez a Bondurant leszármazott baromi jól ír. Először fura volt és túl nyers: az meg micsoda, hogy a párbeszédek nem különülnek el a szövegtől, hanem beleolvadnak...? Ezt így hogy? Hát így...
Eleve nem beszélnek sokat a szereplők, sokkal erősebb maga az atmoszféra, mint a kimondott szavak. Mert az író tollából úgy folynak észrevétlenül a hangulatteremtő kifejezések, hogy az ember csak pislog, hogy hogyan került a poros Virginiába a kalapos és háromrészes öltönyt viselő, csempészetből meggazdagodott parasztok és korrupt sheriffhelyettesek közé. Valahogy minden erőlködéstől mentes Bondurant prózája, mégis olyan erőteljes, amilyennel ritkán találkozni.

Nekem nagyon egyedi és különleges élmény volt ez a regény, az utolsó 50 oldalt éjszakába nyúlóan, dobogó szívvel olvastam. Egyértelmű, hogy ötös.

És most ott tartok, hogy Tom Hardy ide vagy oda, nem biztos, hogy meg merem nézni a filmet, a szöveget olvasva annyira belém íródott egy hibátlan saját film...

[Nadine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The reader is pulled through the prohibition in a small town of Virginia, where the law is corrupt and the authorities are even more so. The reader is introduced to the Bondurants; the main characters: Jack, Forrest, and Howard.

You find yourself on dangerous and risky adventure with this infamous band of brothers. Forrest known for surviving a fight that ended up having his neck sliced and hobbling to the hospital. Jack, the youngest of the brothers, - also the weakest of the three- enjoys the high life and follows the footsteps of his two older brothers. Last, the middle brother, Howard, bombarded of he had witnessed in the Great War and only bootlegs to help his family. They witness their family- mother and sisters- die due to an illness, their father's business fail, and the Depression and drought surrounding them as they try to stay afloat. Bootlegging was the only solution, the money was flowing and they were the Bondurants.

And finally there was Charles Rakes, driven to destroy everything that the Bondurants stood for. He was eager, bold, and cunning. He wanted them in jail. He wanted them dead.

"I can promise you, Forrest said, if anyone tries to stop us, somebody will be hurt."

This quote within itself sums up the protectiveness of Forrest, it makes you respect, yet run away from him. It draws you into his story alone. The constant question that constantly popped in my mind while I read Lawless was: how are you even alive?

"When he was a boy there were no autos, planes, radios, chain stores, or great bloating thrust pushing their interests around the world. Men lived free lives then."

This quote pushes you into perspective; it wasn't the Hollywood version either. It makes you realize how technologically advanced we are, but not only that. The blunt fact that every one of today relies on a plane flight to chase their interests. When back then the curiosity of traveling lived in few people. The idea of escaping was only in the context of a police chase- for the most part. It makes you realize how the world has changed from the late 1920s.

Overall, the book kept the readers interests and emotions. The interesting part about all of this is the simple fact that it is based on true events. The truth was unveiled until the very end--I will not reveal any spoilers.

I absolutely adore this book. The story has its ups and downs, from the dangerous encounters with Charles Rakes to the sweetest moments between Jack and Bertha. I found myself cheering for the Bondurants -even though there were the one's going against the law- it was hard not to. The most interesting thing- and probably the most obvious- was the time switches between each chapter. They would switch between different years, late 1920s and early 1930s. They were placed together seamlessly. The perspectives also changed which gave the story depth and a three dimensional view but at times was hard to understand.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few months back I saw the film Lawless in the theaters and found it to be a pretty good bit of cinema. Director John Hillcoat adapted that film from a novel entitled The Wettest County in the World, and while I had wanted to read the book prior to seeing the film, I was unable to obtain a copy in an orderly fashion and so I went into the theater with nothing to stack the film up against. A few months later I found a copy of the book in a clearance section of the bookstore and I picked it up with eager arms. I had heard the book would appeal to my sensibilities rather well, with the prose style being similar to the lyrical writings of Cormac McCarthy. My favorite novel, if pressed, would probably be Blood Meridian so this was a welcome revelation.

The style is indeed similar, with a lack of quotation to denote the speaking of characters and a muted description of whirlwind violence that treats the flowing of blood and the loss of life with such triviality that it can oftentimes leave the bones of the reader chilled. Stylistically speaking it helps to reaffirm the time period of the novel. It feels folksy. It feels as if you are hearing a story told from the mouths of disenfranchised southern folk living in depression era Virginia. The book itself is very well written. The narrative is framed around writer Sherwood Anderson’s visit to Franklin county to find the story of the bootlegging blockaders called the Bondurant Brothers, ancestors of the writer himself. What is fact and what is fiction here is explained by the author in the afterword, but the legitimacy of the tale isn’t really an issue. Truth or fabrication, the story is a compelling tale. The dialog is minimal and instead we get flighty lyrical descriptions of a bygone time swathed in the red hues of blood violence. While the framing device may lead some readers down a path of confusion, the story moves forward in a carefully constructed pattern that builds up steam to a thrilling conclusion bookended by a somber and melancholy connection to the portions framing the story being told.

I feel like I have to compare it to the filmed version and for those wondering there are considerable differences. Characters in the film are given a little more to work with, extrapolated from the guarded and mysterious depiction that they have in the novel. Some parts are amalgamated or twisted for the sake of drama but I will say that the understated simplicity of the novel feels more genuine while the film played with that tone while miring itself in the melodramatic theatricality of some of the actors present. In the film, only Tom Hardy and perhaps Gary Oldman felt like they belonged. Everyone else was adapting something else entirely.

Put simply, this is an amazing novel that tests people’s expectations and rewards them with something exceptional. I’m sure I will give it another read sometime down the line.

[Kris Aerni · Rating 5 out of 5]

You will want to take your time reading this novel, it's that good. Mr. Bondurant has a gift of painting sublte, yet vivid mental pictures through his storytelling. He will take you by the arm and lead you through a world in the early 30's when America was in the process of Prohibition. This world is both violent & romantic and just happens to sit in the deep forest mountains of Franklin County, Virginia.

This time gone by setting that "The Wettest County In the World" takes place in, will thrust you into the hands of testosterone driven men. Men whom seem to have a diet of nothing more than White Lightening mixed with......well....more White Lightening. You will also be taught what hard decisions and life changing matters have to be made in order to keep this delicate balance of living with illegal moonshining and your relationships with family, friends, love interests and enemies at a life sustaining distance. Enjoy.

[Janelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I could do half stars, I would have given this book a 1.5. The only thing that held my interest was the fact that it dealt with Franklin County history.
I thought the storyline was confusing, randomly jumping between two time periods. It also included another storyline - Sherwood Anderson's time in Franklin County to write a book about moonshining - that could have been left out.

[Nick Guzan · Rating 3 out of 5]

there’s a good story here (mostly true, I think?) and it’s colorfully written in a way where you can practically smell the mud, sweat, and moonshine of Prohibition-era Virginia… so why didn’t I love it?

did the nonlinear structure take me out of the narrative too much? like am i wrong for not finding a novelist asking questions at gas stations as intriguing as the violent and romantic dramas within a family of backcountry moonshiners?

or did my brain keep defaulting to the movie version and make me think about Shia LaBeouf too much (and not Jessica Chastain enough) as I was reading it?

we may never know

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came across this one after I watched the movie, which was fantastic, and mum lent me her copy of the book. It was really engaging and from the first page I was glued to the story. Lawless is a very interesting story, and my first time reading anything with gangsters, bootleggers, and the like. First time reading crime really. This was a worthwhile read! I just have to add. Forrest is really tough to survive a slit throat, a bullet in the stomach and then getting crushed by logs, only to die from falling through ice!!???

[John Bruni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love stories of hillbilly bootleggers, and this hit all of my sweet spots. It's hard to believe it was based on historical events, but check it out. It's written by the descendant of the main characters in this book. If anyone would know . . . I also enjoyed the chapters involving Sherwood Anderson's quest for the truth. This book is great fun.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lawless is one of my favorite movies so this book has been on my TBR for a while. I listened to the audiobook, it was a fun story to listen to. What I think makes this story cool is that Jack’s grandson wrote it.

[Eion Hewson · Rating 2 out of 5]

enjoyed the story but the way it was told was disjointed and if I hadn't seen "Lawless" would have been difficult to follow