When whiskey ruled the West

"The Whiskey Rebels" opens with an unlikely protagonist. Ethan Saunders may have been a Revolutionary War hero, but the onetime American spy has become a drunkard and a lecher, content - almost - to be killed by a jealous husband. When he is rescued by his slave, Leonidas, and a mysterious stranger, we learn about some of the demons that torment him. Accused of treason years before, Saunders lost his good name, his best friend, and the woman he loved, and was left only with Leonidas, whom he considers a friend despite the odious institution that binds them. Indeed, Saunders is on the verge of freeing Leonidas when a letter from his onetime love, now married, calls on him for help, and soon involves him in a plan to save the fledgling country's flailing economy. Saunders needs Leonidas's aid, and tricks him into remaining, beginning a long series of deceptions and double-crosses that continue throughout the book.

But Saunders's story is only one side of the rebellion, and Liss keeps things lively by handing the other side over to a young wife, a would-be novelist named Joan Maycott who leaves New York for the wilds of the Pennsylvania frontier. There, she and her husband become involved in refining the rough home-brewed whiskey that farmers make from their excess corn and rye - a brew the new federal government has decided to tax. The Whiskey Rebellion pitted this "wild west," where whiskey was used almost as currency, against the banking establishment of Philadelphia and New York, and soon Saunders and Maycott are involved. Both consider themselves patriots; both seek to destroy the reckless speculators who would rob their young country blind. But in those shared goals are a host of differences.