Part of Series
Family loyalties and deadly feuds are brought to life in Ninie Hammon’s new intergenerational romp through the history of The Cornbread Mafia in rural Kentucky. Nobody remembers anymore who started the generations-old feud between the two families of moonshiners and bootleggers. But in 1933 a carload of McCluskys ambushed a carload of Hannackers and six people died. The families would have turned the Kentucky hills scarlet with Hannacker and McClusky blood if four women hadn’t ended the war before it began. Their “Crow’s Pledge” stopped the killing, but the hatred lived on. When the county’s National Guard unit is called up thirty-five years later, the Hannackers and McCluskys take their feud to Vietnam with them. It's possible that some of the soldiers who came home in black body bags weren’t killed by the Viet Cong. After discovering marijuana during the war, both families are determined to grow it in the States, setting them at odds again. But there’s no Crow’s Pledge to stop the bloodshed this time. Fire In The Hole is the first book in Ninie Hammon's new Cornbread Mafia series, a fictionalized retelling of the real Cornbread Mafia that sprung up in picturesque Marion County, Kentucky, and grew into the largest illegal marijuana-growing operation in U.S. history.
Author
I was born in Socorro, New Mexico, sometime shortly after the earth cooled off. It’s clear that from the outset my parents never intended for me to amount to anything. How could I? With a name like “Ninie?” Please. Fame and fortune do not come to people named Ninie Bovell (My maiden name.) Gabriella Bovary? You could work with that. Even something as pedestrian as Madeline Bovell or Rebecca Bovell or (though you’d lose points here for lack of originality) Elizabeth Bovell. But Ninie? I never had a chance. If I sound a mite hostile, bear in mind that in one decisive stroke my parents sentenced their precious newborn daughter to a lifetime of explanations that began my first day at Muleshoe Elementary School. (Yeah, Muleshoe. The hits just keep on coming.) After a painful week, I had a rap down that I still use today: “No, it’s not Ninnie like skinny and penny. It’s Ninie—rhymes with tiny and shiny. 9e…get it? And no, it doesn’t mean anything, it isn’t short for anything, long for anything, or a substitute for anything. It just is. (Pause here for the inevitable ‘Why?’) You got me, pal, I couldn’t tell you.” I grew up in Texas, got a BA in English and theatre from Texas Tech University and snagged a job as a newspaper reporter. Didn't know a thing about journalism, but my editor said if I could write he could teach me the rest of it and if I couldn't write the rest of it didn't matter. I hung in there for a 25-year career as a journalist. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but as soon as I figured out that making up the facts was a whole lot more fun than reporting them, I never looked back. Now, I write suspense—every flavor except pistachio: psychological suspense, inspirational suspense, suspense thrillers, paranormal suspense, suspense mysteries. In every book I write I try to keep this promise to Loyal Reader: I will tell you a story in a distinctive voice you'll always recognize, about people as ordinary as you are—people who have been slammed by something they didn’t sign on for, and now they must fight for their lives. Then smack in the middle of their everyday worlds, those people encounter the unexplainable—and it's always the game-changer."
