Bessie Jones: Moonshiner's Daughter

When you grow up in the country, family is everything. Bessie Jones Elliott felt very strongly about her family and her home in Kentucky. Even during tough times in her life, she always held her family together … and they stayed together.

Bessie was a writer. She wrote speeches for politicians, but she also wrote her memories on a brown paper bag or on whatever was in front of her. Bessie always told her family that she wanted to share her memories with them someday, so she planned to write a book.

Bessie asked her daughter, Sharrie, to take care of her writings in case she didn't get a chance to write her book. Unfortunately, Bessie ran out of time and never had a chance to get her book published.

After her mother's death, Sharrie was determined to make her mother's wish a reality. Though it took a while to pull everything together, she fulfilled her promise to her mother by publishing Bessie Jones: Moonshiner's Daughter.

Sharrie McWhirter left home in her twenties and went to work in the city. She is not a "country girl" herself, but when she read her mother's writings, it brought her own memories of "home" back to her.

Sharrie hopes this book gives readers an opportunity to experience her mother's memories — the good, the bad, the funny and the sad — of what it was like to live in the country as a "moonshiner's daughter."