
The Cornbread Mafia
“[A] lucidly spun tale…Think Tarantino on Kentucky bluegrass, scored with Creedence and vigorously reported.”
GQ
Author James Higdon—whose relationship with Johnny Boone,currently a federal fugitive, made him the first journalist subpoenaed underthe Obama administration—takes listeners back to the 1970s and '80s and theclash between federal and local law enforcement and a band of Kentucky farmerswith moonshine and pride in their bloodlines. By 1989 the task force assignedto take down men like Johnny Boone had arrested sixty-nine men and one woman frombusts on twenty-nine farms in ten states, and seized two hundred tons of pot.Of the seventy individuals arrested, zero talked. How it all went down is atale of Mafia-style storylines emanating from the Bluegrass State, andpopulated by Vietnam veterans and weed-loving characters caught up inTarantino-level violence and heart-breaking altruism.
Accompanied by a backdrop of rock-and-roll andrhythm-and-blues, this work of dogged investigative journalism and history istold by Higdon in action-packed, colorful and riveting detail.
Praise
