Cades Cove is known to millions as a beautiful mountain valley tucked within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But before its eventual inclusion in the parks opening in 1937, this stunning place saw a successful and industrious society for 119 years. And in its southwest corner, a suburb cropped up called Chestnut Flats, whose legacy of moonshine and illicit activities would steer the two communities through decades of conflicting ideals, each having vastly different interpretations of the American spirit of freedom.
Moonshine has a way of tugging at people's emotions. Some say it's evil, some sympathize with the idea of doing what one wants on one's own land. Some say it's good and even patriotic to rail against the government's taxation; some say it's wicked and wrong. Which is it then? Within the pages of Mountain Mulekick, readers are tasked with the heavy choice between the pull of peaceful and orderly freedom and the equally inspirational glamour of free will; the same choices that faced the people of Cades Cove and Chestnut Flats so long ago.