Moonlight and moonshine — Reading Notes

A Pilot’s Self-Portrait in a Mirror

The first excerpt devotes several paragraphs to Hemingwood’s face and attitude before any plot action occurs. His “sparkling brown eyes” and “wide, good-humored mouth” are described as belonging to “a contented and cheery person.” This is not mere filler; the narrator uses the mirror scene to show that Hemingwood’s primary conflict is not with external enemies but with his own lack of ambition. He has flown from Long Island to Panama, survived countless forced landings, and yet remains unruffled. The detail that he “could not have told you where he stood on the promotion list” reinforces his detachment. Readers should note how this initial portrait sets up a character who must be jolted into caring—by a bullet, a forced landing, and a schoolteacher named Gail Morgan.

The Kentucky Landscape as Adversary

When Hemingwood lands in the moonshine country, the setting shifts from the cockpit to a world of “shadowed mountains” and “bloody legends.” The excerpts show that the landscape is not just a backdrop but an active force. After his forced landing, he observes that the mountains seem “doubly mysterious, even menacing” under moonlight, and the narrator notes they are “vibrant with some of the passion and untamable wildness of the people whom they sheltered.” This personification of the terrain echoes the novel’s title: moonlight suggests romance, moonshine suggests lawlessness. The pilot’s initial indifference—“didn’t care what those Kentucky mountaineers did so long as they didn’t do it to him”—gives way to a grudging respect for the dangers of the hollows.

Romance Under a Thin Moon

The developing relationship between Hemingwood and Gail Morgan is handled through understated gestures and dialogue. Gail is introduced as a college graduate recovering from “hectic college years,” teaching in a mountain school. Their conversations are casual, with an “undercurrent of friendly understanding.” A key moment occurs when Hemingwood tries to kiss her; she slips away, laughing, and says, “We’re getting along wonderfully, but not that well.” This refusal is playful but firm, establishing her as someone who sets boundaries. Later, when he flies over her schoolhouse and “jazzed the throttle twice,” she waves her handkerchief. The romance proceeds through small signals—a chuckle, a parting smile, a wave—rather than declarations, which suits the novel’s light tone.

Law and Lawlessness in East Point

A striking detail emerges when Gail reveals that the local bootlegger, Ballardson, is also the peace officer. Hemingwood’s reaction—“So the prominent bootlegger is peace officer, eh? That’s what I call a real tight corporation”—shows his amused acceptance of the mountain’s moral flexibility. The narrator earlier notes that an army man is safer than other strangers “except under unusual provocation,” suggesting that the rule of law is fragile here. This tension between military order and local custom is likely to drive the plot, though the excerpts do not reveal how it resolves. Readers should watch for how Hemingwood’s easygoing nature adapts to a place where the lawman makes moonshine.

These excerpts offer a clear sense of the novel’s texture: a lighthearted hero, a setting that blends menace with beauty, and a romance built on mutual respect. The story moves from the intimacy of a shaving mirror to the open sky above the Kentucky hills, and from there to a moonlit road where a kiss is refused but not rejected. Readers who enjoy early twentieth-century adventure-romance will find a competent, unpretentious example here, one that trusts its characters and setting rather than relying on melodrama.

This shaving mirror moment in Burtis’s pilot—that quiet contentment before trouble—reminded me of a gray afternoon when I reread The House of Egremont — Reading Notes. Both stories carry that same hush of a man at ease in his own skin, before the landscape shifts. I closed the book and just sat with that feeling, the way one lingers over a familiar photograph.