Chapter 11 - The Moonshiner's Daughter

This post is about Donna Everhart, a wonderful Southern author whom we had the pleasure of meeting on February 24th for our February Meet and Greet.

While Donna's professional author picture makes her look like a demure Southern lady, she is in fact a firecracker! In person, Donna is charming, witty, and definitely someone you'd want as a friend. Her books reflect her personality to a degree in that the heroines are sharp and sassy while still being very human.

Donna started her career as an IT (Information Technology) professional at an early age and when her company was taken over by another, she turned to writing. She hired a professional editor for her first book - The Education of Dixie Dupree and was told that her book had a fatal flaw in that it was a series of vignettes, not a story. That editor dropped her and she found another who told her she would submit her work to a publisher if she thought it merited. Now, four books later Donna Everhart is a USA Today best selling author.

Here are Donna's books with a brief summary of each. I recommend all of them as they are as described, "gritty southern fiction".

The Education of Dixie Dupree - When the story starts out Dixie is a sassy, smart eight year old. The story spans three years of Dixie's life in the 1960's and is her perspective of her parent's troubled marriage and issues Dixie has with her immediate family. Sometimes humorous, at other times profoundly sad, you will like Dixie for her strength and vivacity.

The Road to Bittersweet - Fourteen-year-old Wallis Ann Stamper lives with her family in the Appalachian Mountains. While life is simple, it is not for the faint hearted. Wallis's family is forced to flee their home when the Tuckasegee River floods and though the family is eventually reunited, Wallis Ann sees a different world from the one she knows.

The Forgiving Kind - Donna Everhart's books are full of strong young women and this one is no exception. As the daughter of a cotton farmer twelve-year-old Martha “Sonny” Creech, loves the land. The family works hard to maintain the farm and Sonny has a special pride for the land which only her father shares. When he dies unexpectedly, her family grabs at straws to keep themselves afloat.

The Moonshiner's Daughter - Born into a family of multi-generational moonshiners, Jessie Sasser wants no part of that life. Jessie's plan to destroy her family's stills has repercussions which extend beyond her family and into old rivalries and family secrets.

Have you read a Donna Everhart book? If so let me know which one and how you liked it!