Book excerpt: For author Renee Carter Tench, April 17, 2008, was the first day of the rest of her life. It was the day she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Tench spent more and more time reflecting on her past experiences and examining her life. In Memoirs of a Bootleggers Daughter, she tries to understand the reason and purpose behind all of the chaos in growing up the child of alcoholic parents. The lone survivor of the Carter family who lived at the end of the dirt road in Hickory, North Carolina, Tench shares the stories of her tumultuous childhood. She tells how, by the grace of God and taking advantage of the opportunities He provided, she broke the cycle of alcoholism in her family, a cycle that began even before her grandfather and father became bootleggers. She often felt looked down on because of the spectacle she and her family often made. Memoirs of a Bootleggers Daughter narrates how Tench started out at the end of one dirt road and ended up at the end of another and the wild journey in between, a journey she would be happy to take again.