Publication March 31, 2026-Kensington Books-Historical Fiction-1920’s-1930’s

Book Summary

In the Prohibition-era Missouri Ozarks, three sisters take over their father’s moonshine business in an evocative story of reinvention, sisterhood, and the alchemy of love for readers of Jeannette Walls, Fannie Flagg, Sue Monk Kidd, and Donna Everhart.

Every batch of Strong moonshine has its own special flavor, thanks to the secret ingredients that matriarch Lidy Strong adds to the barrels of fermenting corn mash. Whether a bucketful of golden peaches, a ripe melon or juicy, jewel-toned berries, that extra “something something” is what makes the Strong “shine” so prized—and allows the family to survive after crop prices plummeted in the wake of the Great War.

Each of the Strong sisters, too, is distinct. Stoic, steadfast Rebecca would rather be with her beloved farm animals or off hunting in the woods than socializing. Middle sister Elsie is kindhearted, beautiful—and itching for a life more thrilling than the farm can offer. Jace, the youngest, is known far and wide as “Shine,” a name that suits her fiery personality and flaming red hair as much as her innate skill with a still.

Their father, Hiram, has been drowning himself in grief and liquor ever since his wife died. But the moonshine business is unforgiving, especially with Prohibition agents turning up in every creek and holler. When tragedy strikes, it falls to the Strong women to keep the still running, the family together, and hope burning on the horizon.

From the Ozark mountains edged in oak and pine, to the outlaw paradise of Hot Springs, Arkansas—where gangsters like Al Capone line the bar at the Southern Club—the sisters’ quests for vengeance, healing, and love will drive them forward, in search of a future as transformative and powerful as the purest Strong moonshine.

Grateful Reader Review by Dorothy Schwab

A fiery, potent experience. In Moonshine Women, Michelle Collins Anderson has blended the Strong family, their close-knit Ozark community, and the Prohibition Era, into, as Al Capone claimed of Shine’s drink, “a damn good” concoction. Moonshine Women is a mixture of secrets and steely women, muddled with two devastating crashes – one a car, two the stock market-and a heavy dash of revenge.

The hills of Missouri and Hot Springs, Arkansas become the backdrop for illegal stills, the saga of the Strong family, and how Shine, the youngest Strong sister attempts to save the family moonshine business on the banks of Kinney Creek. Anderson uses the stages of distilling moonshine to divide this haunting tale of survival into parts: Foreshots, Heads, Hearts, and Tails! Each main character gets his/her own repeating chapters where Anderson develops each unique personality and deftly explores family relationships, beliefs, and what drives each of them.  She laces the saga with history going back to the Louisiana Purchase and Native American tribes, along with stunning descriptions of the Ozark Mountains and the majestic rows of bath houses in Hot Springs. Themes of regret, guilt, revenge, forgiveness and commitment are stirred together to examine the complicated ways families are “created, tested, and constantly changed.”

Years of bootlegging, family battles, and motherless babies; a recipe for adventure and redemption in the Ozarks. Like Lidy’s batches of moonshine, this book has a special “something something.”