<P>Generations of Sassers have made moonshine in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County North Carolina. Their history is recorded in a leather-bound journal that belongs to Jessie Sasser's daddy but Jessie wants no part of it. As far as she's concerned moonshine caused her mother's death a dozen years ago.</P><P>Her father refuses to speak about her mama or about the day she died. But Jessie has a gnawing hunger for the truth — one that compels her to seek comfort in food. Yet all her self-destructive behavior seems to do is feed what her school's gruff but compassionate nurse describes as the 'monster' inside Jessie.</P><P>Resenting her father's insistence that moonshining runs in her veins Jessie makes a plan to destroy the stills using their neighbors as scapegoats. Instead her scheme escalates an old rivalry and reveals long-held grudges. As she endeavors to right wrongs old and new Jessie's loyalties will bring her to unexpected revelations about her family her strengths — and a legacy that may provide her with the answers she has been longing for.</P>
