The Wettest County in the World (2008)

Part family history, part fiction, Matt Bondurant's somber, engrossing novel, The Wettest County in the World, patches together the legend of his paternal grandfather and uncles, a fearsome trio of bootleggers in rural Prohibition-era Virginia. He's wonderful at evoking historical atmosphere — the elaborate stills camouflaged in the woods,the music, the drunken gatherings that explode into shattering violence. (The book would make a teriffic HBO series.) Alas, he is somewhat less wonderful at pacing the narrative, which can be maddeningly slow. B