Prohibition wine: a true story of one woman's daring in twentieth-century America / Marian Leah Knapp

Knapp's (Aging in Places, 2014) latest project reads like the makings of a movie--first woman bootlegger succeeds, despite Feds--while simultaneously telling the story of her grandmother Rebecca Goldberg, a Jewish immigrant-widow trying to provide for her family in the 1920s. As dogged as her grandmother, Knapp ferrets out all possible information about Goldberg, realizing that much is simply unknown or not available. She paints the matriarch as a strong-willed survivor who manages, after her husband's untimely and gruesome death in 1918, to feed, clothe, and educate her sons and daughters in their small Wilmington, Massachusetts community. She thrives, in fact, despite tragedies and hardship: a marriage to a drifter and ne'er-do-well, the early deaths of children and relatives, and the consequent need to continue to reinvent how to earn a living. A few pictures accompany Rebecca's story, spurring readers to begin to understand times past.

Knapp's (Aging in Places, 2014) latest project reads like the makings of a movie—first woman bootlegger succeeds, despite Feds—while simultaneously telling the story of her grandmother Rebecca Goldberg, a Jewish immigrant-widow trying to provide for her family in the 1920s. As dogged as her grandmother, Knapp ferrets out all possible information about Goldberg, realizing that much is simply unknown or not available. She paints the matriarch as a strong-willed survivor who manages, after her husband's untimely and gruesome death in 1918, to feed, clothe, and educate her sons and daughters in their small Wilmington, Massachusetts community. She thrives, in fact, despite tragedies and hardship: a marriage to a drifter and ne'er-do-well, the early deaths of children and relatives, and the consequent need to continue to reinvent how to earn a living. A few pictures accompany Rebecca's story, spurring readers to begin to understand times past. Copyright 2021 Booklist Reviews.