Willie, Rum Running Queen
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Published by: Black Rose Writing
Release Date: February 6, 2024
Pages: 202
ISBN13: 9781685135546
Synopsis
A novel based on the true story of Willie Carter Sharpe. During Prohibition, Rum Running Queen Willie Carter Sharpe rises from poverty to the heights of fame and fortune in the moonshine business. In spite of her high-speed trick driving, the law catches up to her. When she is brought to testify in the Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1934, she realizes she is a target for both sides of the law with no place to hide.
Excerpt
Willie May Collins—that’s the name my sister was given at her birth in 1903. Our mother May—as she liked us to call her—wanted Wilhelmina written on the birth certificate, but Pop said Willie was good enough. He wanted a boy as his firstborn. Not to say he was disappointed, though. A girl could work as hard as a boy. He learned that from growing up on a farm with sisters who could handle a team of horses as well as any fellow. Willie grew to do a man’s work and when she was a teenager, she understood engines better than most men.
By the time she was famous, if that’s what you want to call it, my sister was going by Willie Carter Sharpe, which is how most folks knew her. I’m younger than Willie by four years and throughout my life I’ve held my sister in high regard. There’s always been something setting her apart from most gals in the county, a type of knowing—not school learning but a knowing that comes from beyond books. It’s hard to explain, but you’ll get the picture when you hear Willie’s story.
Willie and I were as close as two cubs in a den until she left to forge out on her own. On her visits to the farm, she spieled stories about making big money driving fast cars. I’d hardly recognize her those times, pulling up to our dilapidated farmhouse in a flashy new car wearing silk dresses instead of the dungarees I was used to seeing her in. When we hadn’t seen her in a spell, I followed her like most others through the newspaper and gossip. Seems everybody wanted to talk about my sister and what she came to be called—Queen of the Roanoke Rum Runners.
It's funny, though—I don’t know why they called her that. From what I know, rum is made from sugarcane. Moonshine whiskey comes from corn, rye, and barley. Rum is dark, but moonshine is clear as glass. Whereas rum is sweet, moonshine liquor burns with its bitterness. Rum comes from Cuba and Virginia whiskey comes from our own back yards.
As far as Willie and her role in running moonshine, she’ll tell it herself. Her recollection—and mine, if you want the truth—might be a bit fuzzy after all these years. Willie and I are kin with the same blood running through our veins. We have a bond, I guess you’d say, although our paths went different directions. But you don’t need to know so much about me. I’ll help her tell it, but this here’s Willie’s tale. So here goes.
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