Troylyn Ball

I was recommended this book by a couple I knew from work when they found out I had gone to college just outside of Asheville. It’s a fascinating story of a woman’s life of family and entrepreneurship as she learns to create and sell moonshine legally in North Carolina.

It was an interesting read for me personally as I graduated and haven’t been back to the area since 2000, and apparently everything that Asheville became happened after that. I didn’t even know that you could buy legal moonshine (it first sold in NC in 2007). I had my first and only (illegal—someone had brought it back from the TN border) taste somewhere between 1996-1997, and I can still remember sitting in a dorm room with fire coursing down my throat.

I loved the Asheville I experienced in the late nineties and all the places we’d call our own. It’s crazy to me that places that are apparently “legendary” weren’t even founded until after I was there. One of those annoying parts of life that continues on without your involvement. I do miss just getting in my car and driving through those beautiful mountains.… (mer)