About this item
Highlights
- "Mooreville," is the story of Anne Commire's grandfather's family during Prohibition and the Depression.
- Author(s): Anne Commire
- 586 Pages
- History, United States
Description
Book Synopsis
"Mooreville," is the story of Anne Commire's grandfather's family during Prohibition and the Depression. George
Moore was first a barber and Justice of the Peace, then Chief of Police in Ecorse, Michigan, directly across the Detroit River from Windsor, Ontario. Over 80% of the illegal beer and liquor that entered the United States from Canada came directly into his town.
How does George enforce the law among friends when bootlegging is one of the only jobs available to feed a family, and his own son may be involved? And, as Ecorse experiences gangland shootings, bombings, and
mysterious murders, is Chief Moore himself becoming a target of the Black Legion, a little-known Klan-like organization which threatens and kills throughout Ohio and Michigan?
After their mother dies a lingering death from tuberculosis, how do George's six daughters cope when he marries the controlling schoolteacher whom they all dislike? This, just when their father is preoccupied with crimes making the daily newspapers? Often hilarious, occasionally tragic, all of the events are true; exhaustively researched to accurately reflect the era, Commire's wit and delicious language bring this story to life.
Review Quotes
"Commire (co-author: Breaking the Silence, 1990, etc.) casts a Great Lake-sized net in this monumental book she completed before her death in 2012. Not only does she delve deeply into the lives of her maternal grandparents and their seven children, one of whom was her mother, in the hardscrabble town of Ecorse, Michigan, but the author also explores Prohibition, which her grandfather tried to enforce as a justice of the peace and later as police chief. The result is an almost Thomas Wolfe-ian blend of historical facts and novelistic dialogue based on Commire's extensive research. ... At the end of the book, Commire's mother remembers the town of her youth, "the promise, the pain, the laughter--mostly the laughter." The author's singular achievement is to bring all of that alive.
This book skillfully uses the struggles of a Michigan official to convey the contradictions that derailed the 18th Amendment."
-Kirkus