This event will take place off-site at the Irving Theater in the CODE Building (225 W. Water Street) and will be free to attend. Please use the theater entrance on Water Street. Doors will open at 6:00 PM.
Join us for an evening with New York Times–bestselling author Jeannette Walls, who will share her new historical fiction novel, Hang the Moon. A conversation with author Liza Nash Taylor will follow. This in-person event will be cosponsored by WriterHouse and will be free to attend and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating. Pre-signed copies of Jeannette Walls’s books will be available for sale before and after the event. Please note that if you would like to join the personalization line after the event to have your book(s) personalized, you must purchase at least one copy of Hang the Moon at the event.
About the Book: Living in a Prohibition-era small town in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Sallie Kincaid is the eight-year-old, adoring daughter of Duke Kincaid, the charismatic patriarch who runs the local lumber mill, the hauling company, and most profitably, the thriving bootlegging business, all under Kincaid Holdings. Sallie thinks the Duke is so grand that he “hung the moon and scattered the stars.” After the tragic death of Sallie’s mother, the Duke remarried, adding a soft-spoken, bookish son, Eddie, to their brood. Sallie, who possesses the same fearless, sharp-witted streak as her father, is tasked with “making a Kincaid” out of her younger stepbrother. But, her attempt results in a devastating accident, casting Sallie to live with her aunt Faye miles away.
Sallie returns nine years later to reclaim her place in the family and take the reins of Kincaid Holdings. But, the world to which Sallie returns as a young woman—one filled with gun-wielding moonshiners, violent racism, exploitation of all kinds, and temperance activists—is much different than the one she remembers. Can Sallie Kincaid survive in a town conspiring to dismantle all that she has known? Like The Glass Castle, Hang the Moon offers an enthralling read about an intrepid young woman who must survive in a tempestuous world not of her making. Hang the Moon showcases Jeannette Walls’s rare metamorphosis from gossip columnist to bestselling memoirist, to novelist, and now, to formidable writer of historical fiction.
Jeannette Walls graduated from Barnard College and was a journalist in New York. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, has been a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years. She is also the author of the instant New York Times bestsellers The Silver Star and Half Broke Horses, which was named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Walls lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer John Taylor.
Liza Nash Taylor is the author of two recent historical novels, Etiquette for Runaways (2020) and In All Good Faith (2021), both from Blackstone Publishing. She was a 2018 Hawthornden International Fellow and received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts the same year. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, Deep South, and others. A native Virginian, Liza lives with her husband and dogs in an old farmhouse in Keswick, which serves as a setting for her novels.
If you would like to order Hang the Moon to read before the event, please see below for the New Dominion Bookshop book order form or call the shop at 434-295-2552. There is no need to order the book if you plan to attend the event and purchase the book in person that evening.
"There’s never a dull moment in Hang the Moon, a rollicking tale set in Prohibition-era Virginia [with] hairpin twists and turns of its plot. Walls has spun another rich story. Also, it’s a lot of fun to read."
—Marion Winik, The Washington Post
New Dominion Bookshop Book Order Form
Shop local and support your community bookstore! Order books from New Dominion Bookshop by filling out the contact form below. Please make sure that you list the book title(s) that you would like to order. We will give you a call when your order is ready. There is no need to pre-pay. We will collect your payment when you pick up your order or when your order is shipped. If you would like your book(s) to be signed and/or inscribed, please include that information in the “Message for Our Booksellers” field.