Longarm 217: Longarm and the Whiskey Woman

Boy!what a humdinger of a story.This episode was published in January 1997,and what a tale to start off the new year with. We get a real change of scenery here,when Longarm gets sent to Little Rock ,Arkansas,to find out who is making all the moonshine and flooding the market with it.Billy Vail warns him not to get too involved with these Ozark mountain hillbillies because they can get as dangerous as any owlhoots he usually confronts in the Old West. Longarm gets himself involved much deeper than he intended; ,and can you imagine ,he agrees to marrying the old man's beautiful daughter;as his only hope for getting out alive. The tale has an excellent storyline that grips you from beginning to end. The author of this episode,has a great talent for character development,and gives the reader great conversation. The author makes you feel you are right there along side our hero,as he goes through this harrowing experience. Along with enjoying westerns,I also enjoy novels of the Old Deep South. One of my favorites authors in that gendre is Erskine Caldwell. You might recall he wrote many earthy novels of the South .His most popular being "Tobacco Road" and "God's Little Acre." This episode reminded me of the sort of thing Caldwell gave us. I can't say enough about this episode and if there were any episode in this long running series that would be a candidate for a movie;this would certainly be one of them. It's gonna be hard in the future to hear about hillbillies,and moonshiners,without this tale coming to mind.