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The Bootlegger's Mistress
Carrie Lacey's happy upbringing is seemingly immune from the pressures of growing up Black in rural South Carolina during the Great Depression. But life changes when her mother and six siblings are forced from their Anderson home, leaving Carrie and her father, Hallie.
While working for White businessman Tommy Joe Butler -a bootleg liquor dealer - Carrie becomes aware of the depth of her father's campaign to change the lives of African Americans. He is using some of the strategies of the Underground Railroad, the nonviolent system of freeing slaves in pre-Civil War America to achieve his mission. Her childhood friend, Nappy Eddie, attempts to keep the truth from Carrie, but to no avail. When Butler and Hallie continue to disagree over property ownership, the seventeen-year old departs Anderson in frustration.
During her travels, Carrie encounters her alter ego, Dicie Caughman, commencing an odyssey that spans nearly eighty years and numerous locales, including life-enriching stops in Jacksonville, Florida and Newark, New Jersey. Carrie, in the form of Dicie, lives a good life as a nationally respected media mogul, though it is marked with deep-rooted secrets from her past life in South Carolina.
The Bootlegger's Mistress embodies the essence of The Great Migration - the decades-long movement of six million African Americans from the racially oppressive South to the purportedly economic opportunity-laden North during much of the twentieth century.
While working for White businessman Tommy Joe Butler -a bootleg liquor dealer - Carrie becomes aware of the depth of her father's campaign to change the lives of African Americans. He is using some of the strategies of the Underground Railroad, the nonviolent system of freeing slaves in pre-Civil War America to achieve his mission. Her childhood friend, Nappy Eddie, attempts to keep the truth from Carrie, but to no avail. When Butler and Hallie continue to disagree over property ownership, the seventeen-year old departs Anderson in frustration.
During her travels, Carrie encounters her alter ego, Dicie Caughman, commencing an odyssey that spans nearly eighty years and numerous locales, including life-enriching stops in Jacksonville, Florida and Newark, New Jersey. Carrie, in the form of Dicie, lives a good life as a nationally respected media mogul, though it is marked with deep-rooted secrets from her past life in South Carolina.
The Bootlegger's Mistress embodies the essence of The Great Migration - the decades-long movement of six million African Americans from the racially oppressive South to the purportedly economic opportunity-laden North during much of the twentieth century.
252 pages, Hardcover
Published October 14, 2020
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October 29, 2021THE BOOTLEGGER'S MISTRESS offers an inspiring account of a captivating protagonist who not only took on the Great Migration as the impossible challenge it was but was brave enough to seek justice, not just for herself but for her family name as well.
Read our full review here:
https://booktrib.com/2021/10/29/histo...
Read our full review here:
https://booktrib.com/2021/10/29/histo...
February 24, 2025
i struggled to differentiate the timelines and hops at first in the audiobook, but otherwise it had me really immersed in the story
April 28, 2023
ith his latest novel, The Bootlegger’s Mistress Marc Curtis Little shines a compelling light on the difficult implications of America’s Great Migration, the decades-long exodus of African Americans from the racially oppressive South to the North and West. This is the tale of a fictional family’s 1940s journey under circumstances that require harrowing travel through a twentieth-century version of the underground railroad. It’s also a story about a murder and unresolved justice that lingers eight decades later, both in their hearts and in Anderton, the upstate South Carolina town they left behind.
In the brief prologue that launches the book, 15-year-old Carrie Lula Lacey encounters the sexual advances of her white bootlegger boss, Tommy Joe Butler. While the outcome is not disclosed, the subtext of life in the South for a young woman of color in the early 1940s emerges, with impossible stakes that include loss of life, employment and credibility (as there are no witnesses) — not to mention the fear that if her father finds out, he will fight to defend her honor, an act with its own set of potential consequences.
Now known as Dicie Caughman, we meet Carrie as a 95-year-old retired journalist living in Newark, NJ. When the police come to arrest her for the murder of Tommy Joe Butler, still unsolved 80 years later, Dicie sees a chance, even a responsibility, to swing justice in her family’s favor and exonerate her name as well.
Who murdered Tommy Joe Butler on the night she fled town, and can Dicie prove all these years later that her family’s land — land that Mr. Butler claimed as his at the time of his death — really belonged to her family? Little’s questions draw us in right away for their urgency and impossibility.
With her claim that “I’ve been nobody’s paragon of virtue during my ninety-five years,” Dicie makes it clear that her success in life as a respected journalist means little until she gets her past straight. (Aptly, a James Baldwin quote prefaces the book and establishes its theme: “To accept one’s past … is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.”)
The story alternates between the riveting, present-day unfolding of Dicie’s arrest, and its eventual outcome, and the rich backstory of her youth. We learn about her childhood before and after her beloved mother and six siblings left her and her father in Anderton, SC; her employment as a bookkeeper for Mr. Butler’s bootlegging operation; her flight from Anderton; her time spent in Jacksonville, FL; and finally her journalism career in Newark that focused largely on “the malaise commonly known as local politics, especially as it applied to Blacks in the early 1960s.”
Other colorful characters populate the pages as well. Dicie’s maternal grandfather Nate, a Cherokee Indian, earned his money and the family land by helping white people in Anderton make moonshine after the boll weevil destroyed the cotton fields in the early 1920s. Nappy Eddie, her first love in Anderton, helps her escape.
Her adopted grandson Nathan Absalom Caughman, aka Baby Boy, runs her weekly Newark newspaper for 25 years and shepherds Dicie through her later years with affection and attention. Louis Bilal, another Anderton native, is a Muslim lawyer who plays a big role in the story even at age 93, stating that “In no way, shape or form, does black ever crack, even in extreme age.” The entrance of an unlikely culprit makes for a dramatic ending well worth the wait.
In a context of impeccably researched historical fiction, The Bootlegger’s Mistress offers an inspiring account of a captivating protagonist who not only took on the Great Migration as the impossible challenge it was but was brave enough to seek justice, not just for herself but for her family name as well.
In the brief prologue that launches the book, 15-year-old Carrie Lula Lacey encounters the sexual advances of her white bootlegger boss, Tommy Joe Butler. While the outcome is not disclosed, the subtext of life in the South for a young woman of color in the early 1940s emerges, with impossible stakes that include loss of life, employment and credibility (as there are no witnesses) — not to mention the fear that if her father finds out, he will fight to defend her honor, an act with its own set of potential consequences.
Now known as Dicie Caughman, we meet Carrie as a 95-year-old retired journalist living in Newark, NJ. When the police come to arrest her for the murder of Tommy Joe Butler, still unsolved 80 years later, Dicie sees a chance, even a responsibility, to swing justice in her family’s favor and exonerate her name as well.
Who murdered Tommy Joe Butler on the night she fled town, and can Dicie prove all these years later that her family’s land — land that Mr. Butler claimed as his at the time of his death — really belonged to her family? Little’s questions draw us in right away for their urgency and impossibility.
With her claim that “I’ve been nobody’s paragon of virtue during my ninety-five years,” Dicie makes it clear that her success in life as a respected journalist means little until she gets her past straight. (Aptly, a James Baldwin quote prefaces the book and establishes its theme: “To accept one’s past … is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.”)
The story alternates between the riveting, present-day unfolding of Dicie’s arrest, and its eventual outcome, and the rich backstory of her youth. We learn about her childhood before and after her beloved mother and six siblings left her and her father in Anderton, SC; her employment as a bookkeeper for Mr. Butler’s bootlegging operation; her flight from Anderton; her time spent in Jacksonville, FL; and finally her journalism career in Newark that focused largely on “the malaise commonly known as local politics, especially as it applied to Blacks in the early 1960s.”
Other colorful characters populate the pages as well. Dicie’s maternal grandfather Nate, a Cherokee Indian, earned his money and the family land by helping white people in Anderton make moonshine after the boll weevil destroyed the cotton fields in the early 1920s. Nappy Eddie, her first love in Anderton, helps her escape.
Her adopted grandson Nathan Absalom Caughman, aka Baby Boy, runs her weekly Newark newspaper for 25 years and shepherds Dicie through her later years with affection and attention. Louis Bilal, another Anderton native, is a Muslim lawyer who plays a big role in the story even at age 93, stating that “In no way, shape or form, does black ever crack, even in extreme age.” The entrance of an unlikely culprit makes for a dramatic ending well worth the wait.
In a context of impeccably researched historical fiction, The Bootlegger’s Mistress offers an inspiring account of a captivating protagonist who not only took on the Great Migration as the impossible challenge it was but was brave enough to seek justice, not just for herself but for her family name as well.
November 13, 2020
This book was so interesting and amazing. Although it's a fictional book, It felt and read like it was a nonfiction read. It was just that good. The characters seemed so life like. I was trying to figure out how the state wanted to prosecute her, but the woman that lied and got Emitt Till killed was allowed to not face charges. That's how real I thought the story was. The author did a phenomenal job with this read. Such an amazing job. The flow was great, and I didn't want to put it down.
I received a copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.
I received a copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.
March 20, 2022
Historical Fiction at its Best
Intelligently, well written. Historically based on facts that anyone with ties to the geographical locations of this powerful work of fiction will readily recognize. I feel with the right cinematographer this would be Golden Globe, Peoples Choice award winning and Oscar worthy. No rewrites needed. A beautifully told story of the human condition of the eras from beginning to end.
Intelligently, well written. Historically based on facts that anyone with ties to the geographical locations of this powerful work of fiction will readily recognize. I feel with the right cinematographer this would be Golden Globe, Peoples Choice award winning and Oscar worthy. No rewrites needed. A beautifully told story of the human condition of the eras from beginning to end.
July 12, 2022
I thought this book was very interesting and had a great perspective on things that happened in our country and what is continuing to happen. I listened to the audio book and thought that there would have been a better narrator. I feel bad saying that because the author narrated the audio book. Great writer but didn't quite hit the mark for narrating it.
September 3, 2022
This book of historical fiction shines a light on injustices committed or attempted against blacks in the South when efforts were used to acquire black owned property by whites. The protagonist is a feisty 96 year old who stands trial for a 70+ year old murder. I enjoyed the glimpse into courtroom drama as her defense team worked the case. I also enjoyed the family history and her career path.
November 15, 2020
What an intense and heart-wrenching story that details what happened to the black people during the times of atrocities by the upper white class. Really good book to read.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
December 21, 2022
Excellent!
September 8, 2025
Not about bootleggers but a very clear look at the social system of the 1940s.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews