The Whiskey Rebels: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle),   ISBN:9780812974539

Customer Rating: 

Some reviews proclaim this one of the best books of the year. Well, I don't know if I'd say that.
It is very entertaining. It weaves two storylines which impact one another throughout the book very well and makes historical references.

It's basically a mystery with very heavy American Colonial feel to it - be ready to read it as it would have been written 200 years ago.

All in all, a good read but make sure you like your American History before picking this book.

Customer Rating: 

I really enjoyed the historical details, and how the story wove several very different stories together to lead to a gripping conclusion. At the same time, I wanted him to do a version of the multi-generation Weaver story narrative. As I was reading of the 200+ year old corruption, I wanted his corrupt bankster characters to be named Geithner, Goldman, Sachs, Gramm.

Customer Rating: 

I've read all of David Liss's Benjamin Weaver books and reviewed on occasion Liss's blog, so I was well disposed to like this book. Unfortunately, as wonderful as Liss can capture and evoke a period - and his mastery of this is on display in this book - the story of The Whiskey Rebels is thin and weak compared to its historical setting.

First, the back-and-forth chapter-by-chapter switching of narrators between Mrs. Maycott and Ethan Saunders is okay but because Ethan's tale takes place 1792 while Mrs. Maycott's leads up to join with Saunders' narrative, the two are far too disconnected to work well switching back and forth. In fact, I was a third of the way through the book when I came but a few pages away from basically ignoring the Mrs. Maycott chapters to focus on the more immediate, more rapid-paced suspense of Ethan Saunders's story. I did not do so, but in hindsight, I think readers can skip a fairly significant chunk of the Mrs. Maycott tale until the autumn of 1791 - up until that point, the summary is she is a woman done wrong by speculators and finance men, and thus out for vengeance. Thus, setting up a back-and-forth weaving of a story between two narrators inevitably sets up a subconscious competition in the mind of the reader for attention - and due to Saunders' immediacy (versus Maycott's historical "how I got to this"), Saunders' tale wins.

Second, the financial shenanigans are not as nicely explained as they might be - certainly has Liss has done in the Weaver series. And while some of this confusion is nicely laid at the feet of the Saunders' narrator, it hardly does the reader justice to try to puzzle out not only what is going on in the mystery but also the various aspects of the post-Revolutionary War American financial system. The Hamilton-Jefferson rivalry was given good notice, but only poor things were said of the Bank of the United States, and no information was provided on why such a national bank even needed to exist (one nation, one currency anyone?). Ultimately, this made the overall novel one-sided as the Maycott narrator was against the Bank while the Saunders narrator was ambivalent.

Lastly, the ending of the novel was weak. There hints of "I felt I should see him again" and all that smacks of Creative Writing 101. If Liss meant to leave things open for a possible sequel, he could have - and indeed has done in other books - much, much better. After investing all of the novel into the stories of the two narrators, while the central Bank predicament is resolved, only the thinest of resolutions is provided for the stories of Saunders or Maycott.

In sum, the book is okay, but ultimately unsatisfactory. Liss has written much better repeatedly. This book needed either a few more chapters at the end to provide the reader a better understanding of the narrators' fates, or needed to be reworked completely.

I recommend the book if you are a fan of Liss or a fan of the post-Revolutionary War period in America, but otherwise, there is far better fare out there.

Customer Rating: 

My reaction to this book is mixed. It's too long and moves too slowly, as Liss weaves, too intricately and with too much leisurely 18th century verbiage, a plot with far more scheming than action. His resolution of it is somewhat tortured; the determination of certain opposed principals not to hurt each other borders on the unbelievable.

On the other hand, he does a fine job, as he always does, at evoking the period, and in using market machinations and financial tricks to create a plausible plot.

Liss alternately follows two main characters, disgraced Civil War spy Ethan Saunders and frontierswoman Joan Maycott, until their paths cross during a 1790s financial panic. Playing main roles are Alexander Hamilton, financier William Duer - an afterword notes he was a historical character - and a host of fictional figures including Maycott's Whiskey Rebel sidekicks, Saunders' black slave Leonidas, Hamilton's Treasury Department spy Lavien and Saunders' onetime love Cynthia Pearson, now married to one of Duer's financial henchmen.

Saunders, now a womanizing drunk, was framed as a turncoat during the war, an American spy who allegedly changed sides to sell secrets to the British. Now living by his wits in Philadelphia, he is nearing the end of his rope when he discovers Cynthia Pearson is around - and needs his help. The mystery deepens, he wrenches himself out of thegutter and slowly peels away layers of the financial plot, while shadowy forces seek to stop him. Who? And why?

Maycott's story takes us to the western Pennsylvania frontier. Liss notes in his afterword it was as brutal as portrayed here. It's almost too brutal to read about. I generally appreciate realism but had to put this book down several times; frontier villages where the men routinely put each other's eyes out in ritualistic drinking brawls, don't make the most appetizing reading material. But the truths behind it - frontier areas where pioneers could be cheated and viciously used by local strongmen answerable to no one - are all too believable, and a realistic counterweight to the Crockett, Boone and Appleseed image many of us have of that period.

Maycott and her group are pioneers conned into accepting worthless land on oppressive terms in exchange for debts owed for their Revolutionary War service. They want to get even in part for wrongs done to them personally, but also for the more distant and abstract financial deeds they believe not only hurt them but betray the promise of American independence and the war they fought for it. They particularly loathe Hamilton's ruinous whiskey tax levied on the frontiersmen, who use whiskey, in the absence of any possible trade or cash economy, more as currency than as a commodity.

Liss employs his postmodern sensibilities to varying effect. Maycott is the becoming-trite figure of The Strong Woman Who Is Smarter Than The Men. Her weaving her way into Eastern society to affect her revenge, though, works well. Two of her gang are a hearty frontier gay couple. Brokeback Whiskey Rebellion? Puh-leez. Saunders' slave Leonidas is the most believable of the diversity characters, with complexity and depth, allowing Liss to explore the dimensions and ambiguities of slave and free black life in the 1790s.

Lavien never really comes alive for me. Liss draws him as a Jewish 1790s Jack Bauer - a relentlessly competent agent of Hamilton as violent as needs be to get the mission done, while never letting his passions overtake him and retaining a basic decency. As much as I enjoy reading about Jews with guns - action Jews! yeah! - he just never seems very Jewish in flavor, or rooted in anyone real. His character allows passing mention of a tangential Jewish angle to Hamilton's historical background sometimes used by his enemies, but ultimately Lavien's Jewishness seems superfluous.

Saunders himself is entertaining. The gift of gab that is his main survival tool also makes him good company for the journey here. A journey that's a little too long.

Customer Rating: 

I enjoyed the Whiskey Rebels from the start. Excellent mix of real history with the story. I have read a couple of his earlier books, and this was a superior effort. Highly recommended.