The Moonshine Women

Coming March 31, 2026

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.

About The Flower Sisters

Daisy Flowers is fifteen in 1978 when her free-spirited mother dumps her in Possum Flats, Missouri. It's a town that sounds like roadkill and, in Daisy's eyes, is every bit as dead. Sentenced to spend the summer living with her grandmother, the wry and irreverent town mortician, Daisy draws the line at working for the family business, Flowers Funeral Home. Instead, she maneuvers her way into an internship at the local newspaper where, sorting through the basement archives, she learns of a mysterious tragedy from fifty years earlier...

On a sweltering, terrible night in 1928, an explosion at the local dance hall left dozens of young people dead, shocking and scarring a town that still doesn't know how or why it happened. Listed among the victims is a name that's surprisingly familiar to Daisy, revealing an irresistible family connection to this long-ago accident. Obsessed with investigating the horrors and heroes of that night, Daisy soon discovers Possum Flats holds a multitude of secrets for a small town. And hardly anyone who remembers the tragedy is happy to have some teenaged hippie asking questions about it – not the fire-and-brimstone preacher who found his calling that tragic night; not the fed-up police chief; not the mayor's widow or his mistress; not even Daisy's own grandmother, a woman who's never been afraid to raise eyebrows in the past, whether it's for something she's worn, sworn, or done for a living. Some secrets are guarded by the living, while others are kept by the dead, but as buried truths gradually come into the light, they'll force a reckoning at last.

Based on the 1928 Bond Dance Hall Explosion in Michelle's hometown of West Plains, Missouri, that killed 39 people, THE FLOWER SISTERS is about how a community deals with — and heals from — secrets, trauma and loss. And how forgiveness can forge new friendships and a sense of belonging. While the mystery surrounding that real-life event remains, Michelle has imagined one possible path — and populated it with people who epitomize the town's humor, pain and oftentimes maddening humanity.