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coroboreefarm
May 01, 2017coroboreefarm rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
This third novel by Emily Schultz is a semi biographical tale of rum runners in Detroit during Prohibition. Before the Ambassador Bridge was built, bootleggers uses boats, and the frozen surface of the river that separates Canada and the United States to smuggle illegal liquor from Windsor, Ont. to Detroit. Emily Schultz was inspired to write the novel by her own family's ties to bootlegging — and pivots it around a character, based on her own great uncle who mysteriously disappeared crossing the river on a cold winter's night. Suicide, misadventure or just an accident? The book features a cast of colourful characters who tread the line between true immorality and simply trying to provide for their families in an era where jobs were tenuous. It also chronicles a time in the past where matters of immigration and the institution of border patrols and policing between the United States and Canadian borders were important political issues, as timely today as in the heady days of the Jazz Age. This is a well researched, well crafted and enjoyable story that will transport you back in time to place at once familiar and not.This book is part of the CBC's Spring 2017 Reading list. Since writing this comment, I passed this book on to my husband, who although a voracious reader of newspapers, magazines and journals, has not finished a novel since I have known him. He loved this book, and read every page, right to the end, commenting along the way about how well written it was. I think that might be a great recommendation.