An underdog. An unlikely heroine.
The year was 1932. It was the height of prohibition and smack in the middle of the Great Depression. Organized crime has flocked to Arkansas. Even the famed Al Capone has been known known to frequent the Arlington Hotel and Ohio Club in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The Vegas, before Vegas. Charlotte Crane, a young wife of 23, lives with her husband, Jackson, in the quiet town of Woodland Heights, Arkansas, near the Ouachita Forest, in Southwest Arkansas. Despite having no formal education, Charlotte is considered a master mechanic; having been taught by one of the best engineers in Dallas, and then sent to the school of hard knocks by working for her dad in his machine shop. The Depression is killing her and Jackson’s own auto shop that they opened in Woodland Heights. Jackson takes the chance to run a cord of liquor to help pay the bills. The drop goes south, setting Charlotte on the never-ending vendetta to topple Alec Donoghue, the gangster who rules over Woodland Heights. In doing so, she will become the most revered bootlegger in the state, and the most feared crime boss on her side of the Mason-Dixon.
An underdog. An unlikely heroine.
The year was 1932. It was the height of prohibition and smack in the middle of the Great Depression. Organized crime has flocked to Arkansas. Even the famed Al Capone has been known known to frequent the Arlington Hotel and Ohio Club in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The Vegas, before Vegas. Charlotte Crane, a young wife of 23, lives with her husband, Jackson, in the quiet town of Woodland Heights, Arkansas, near the Ouachita Forest, in Southwest Arkansas. Despite having no formal education, Charlotte is considered a master mechanic; having been taught by one of the best engineers in Dallas, and then sent to the school of hard knocks by working for her dad in his machine shop. The Depression is killing her and Jackson’s own auto shop that they opened in Woodland Heights. Jackson takes the chance to run a cord of liquor to help pay the bills. The drop goes south, setting Charlotte on the never-ending vendetta to topple Alec Donoghue, the gangster who rules over Woodland Heights. In doing so, she will become the most revered bootlegger in the state, and the most feared crime boss on her side of the Mason-Dixon.
I jerked my steering wheel right.
My bumper connected with the rear end of Donoghue’s car. His Chevy went left, fishtailed, then found the edge of a ditch.
The little coupe turned sideways and flipped—grass, gravel, and dirt flying into the night like water being slung off a pinwheel.
I stomped my clutch and brakes. The rocks under my tires complained, but my Ford came to a sideways stop.
My headlights pointed at Donoghue’s wreck. His car had rolled to a stop at a forty-five-degree angle with the driver’s side door in the air. His rear tires turned listlessly, and smoke poured out of the car’s engine bay.
I sucked in a breath. My heart was beating my sternum like a drumhead.
“Surely, he didn’t live through that,” I whispered to myself as I wrung my steering wheel.
The driver’s side door flopped open. Donoghue slithered up out of his car and fell into the street face-first.
His normally crisp, clean three-piece white suit was coated red. Blood dripped from his temple and dirt plastered his face.
The fifty-three-year-old man pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. His sea-green eyes trailed up to my windshield. A small grin arced his face.
My blood went cold. I jerked my transmission into neutral, stomped my parking brake, reached over into the passenger side seat, and gripped the handle of my warm Colt 1911.
I threw my driver’s side door open and stepped out into the cold night air. I stormed up to Donoghue and kicked his head sideways.
He collapsed and rolled over. Blood poured from his nose.
He opened his clenched eyes and looked up at me. His smirk was finally gone. “That all you got, bitch?” he growled in his heavy Irish accent.
I ground my teeth and stomped on his face.
I let him grovel and curse for all of two seconds. I then grabbed him by the back of his collar and pulled his sorry ass up onto his knees.
I came around to his front.
His eyelids slid open. I looked down at him.
In all my time, I’d never seen so much cowardice in one man. And never had I felt so devoid of life in one moment.
I chambered a round.
The metallic chink of the slide sent shivers down my spine.
I brought the barrel up to Donoghue’s forehead and held the grip with two hands.
“So this is it?” he muttered. “Done in by you of all people?”
My finger came down to the trigger. “I guess so.”
Word on the street is that you don’t mess with Donoghue and live to tell the tale. If you’re black-skinned, well that's just too bad. The hotel sign displaying “No Colors Allowed” can be thrust in your face, especially if your overall appearance doesn’t do you any favors. Yet, in the face of all this, a young fella—white, coming from an averagely stable family—is bold enough to engage in interracial marriage and bootlegging. You should cut him some slacks anyway. The girl is pretty-faced, good with her hands, and as tough as they come. And times are damn hard —the great era of depression in America. So, this young fella crosses the line; he angers his family, for which they throw him out, and two, he forgets who owns the street, for which Donoghue forgives not. Even so, it’s not over yet, because the widow has taken over, clear-headed, determined, thirsty for revenge, good at business, and is in a collabo with the maestro distiller.
B. A. Lenaway ’s Whiskey Widow is a female-led story, fast-paced, bloody at times, set in the great depression era, and one of the best widow’s wraths I’ve ever read this year. Charlotte isn’t cut out for what later besets her, and the crime she witnesses in her house breaks her. Still, she emerges strong, taking a temporary residence in Harrington Hotel, and begins plotting her revenge, surprising the enemy. In other words, it’s more like the David-Goliath story, except in the place of David, we have a black woman.
What impressed me most was Charlotte’s strategy and how laser-focused she is at implementing it. She first finds her way into Donoghue’s empire, proving her worth, and then she pulls the rug out from under Donoghue’s feet, letting him know who’s in charge and she gets to look into the enemy’s eye at last. Her patience and quest to earn a name for herself make her a very strong female character.
Set in the 1930s in America, specifically Woodland Heights, Arkansas, the novel’s emphasis on racism is spot on. Signs such as “No Coloreds on the Elevator,” and “No Colors Allowed” are commonplace. To Charlotte, Jeb says, “You’re a broke, lonely woman. How can you afford a car? What’d you do? Get some whore job? Bout the only place a black girl can get a job these days it seems.” Overall, because of her skin color, Charlotte has been kicked in the gut a lot and her rising to the top straightly stemmed from her struggles.
And the story also has a great ending. Earlier on, I was following up on the new “bill that would raise the legal percentage of alcohol in beer to 3.5 percent instead of 0.5 percent,” wondering how that would affect Charlotte’s business, and when Daddy’s letter arrived, I felt happy for Charlotte, especially after she made her decision. If you’re an avid reader and have been binging on crime fiction, especially the mobster ones, you’ll enjoy Whiskey Widow. No doubt about that.