The Wettest County in the World
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40 free The Wettest County in the World trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Matt Bondurant's 2008 novel The Wettest County in the World turns his own family history into a hard, lyrical story of Prohibition. Its heroes are the three Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Virginia, moonshiners with a reputation for being impossible to kill. This quiz covers the book and the history behind it: the brothers and what happened to them, the reporter who gave the county its nickname, the 1935 conspiracy trial, and how mountain whiskey was made, hidden and run. It also follows the story to the screen in Lawless, from the cast to the shoot. It is written for readers of the novel, fans of the film and anyone curious about the bootlegging years. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the true story as you play.
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Q 01Which English actor plays Forrest Bondurant, the middle brother rumoured to be indestructible, in the film Lawless?
Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy got the part only after the film's first financing fell apart in 2010; Ryan Gosling had been attached to play Forrest.
Q 02Jack Bondurant, the youngest bootlegging brother in The Wettest County in the World, was author Matt Bondurant's what?
His grandfather
Jack was his grandfather, who lived to 90. Only after Jack's death in 2000 did the family dig up old newspaper reports of the brothers' shootout.
Q 03Which American motorsport traces its roots to Prohibition moonshine runners tuning cars to outrun the law?
NASCAR
NASCAR grew out of bootleggers racing their modified cars against each other for pride, and many kept hauling liquor after Prohibition ended in 1933.
Q 04In Lawless, which illness kills the supposedly indestructible Forrest Bondurant after he falls into a frozen lake?
Pneumonia
Pneumonia does what his enemies could not: Forrest drags himself out of the water after a drunken stumble at a family reunion, then dies of the illness.
Q 05Lawless is set in Franklin County, Virginia, but in which other state was the film actually shot?
Georgia
Georgia stood in for the hills of Prohibition-era Virginia, with the cast living near Atlanta for three months while towns such as Newnan and LaGrange hosted the shoot.
Q 06Which author of Winesburg, Ohio is credited with calling Franklin County the wettest county in the world?
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson reported on the county's 1935 conspiracy trial as a journalist, and Matt Bondurant made him a character who goes looking for the brothers.
Q 07Which amendment to the US Constitution ended Prohibition in 1933, though Franklin County's illegal stills kept running?
The Twenty-first
The Twenty-first is the only amendment that repeals another one, cancelling the Eighteenth, and the only one ratified by state conventions.
Q 08Prohibition-era moonshiners risked poisoning their customers with lead by using which car part as a condenser?
A radiator
A radiator made a cheap condenser for a backwoods still, but the lead in its soldered joints tainted the liquor and could leave drinkers blind.
Q 09In The Wettest County in the World, what happens to Forrest Bondurant at the County Line restaurant in 1928?
His throat is cut
His throat is cut in a night attack that he somehow survives, and the stories it spawns turn him into a man the county believes cannot be killed.
Q 10The prosecutor acquitted in Franklin County's 1935 moonshine trial was a grand-nephew of which Confederate general?
Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee's grand-nephew Carter Lee was the county's Commonwealth's Attorney, and he walked free while most of his co-defendants were convicted.
Q 11Which American actor, the first person cast in Lawless, plays the youngest Bondurant brother, Jack?
Shia LaBeouf
Shia LaBeouf was the only actor who stayed when the project fell apart in 2010, and he helped revive it by sending the script to a future co-star.
Q 12American moonshine of the kind made in Franklin County is traditionally distilled from a mash of which grain?
Corn
Corn is the American moonshiner's grain, while illicit distillers in Scotland and Ireland traditionally made their clear, unaged whiskey from barley.
Q 13In The Wettest County in the World, eldest brother Howard Bondurant is haunted by his service in which conflict?
The Great War
Q 21Which English actor plays Floyd Banner, the gangster who guns down two federal agents in broad daylight in Lawless?
Gary Oldman
Gary Oldman's Banner spares Jack once he learns he is a Bondurant, then becomes one of the brothers' regular customers.
Q 22Which Australian actor plays Charlie Rakes, the corrupt lawman who hunts the Bondurant brothers in Lawless?
Guy Pearce
Guy Pearce created the character's hairstyle himself, and the filmmakers reworked Rakes's personality to persuade him to take the role.
Q 23In Lawless, former dancer Maggie comes to Franklin County from which big city, and later plans to return there?
Chicago
Chicago is where Maggie means to go back to, until Forrest talks her into staying and gives her a spare room.
The Great War left Howard, an ox of a man, besieged by the horrors he had witnessed, while middle brother Forrest became the family's hard-headed businessman.
Q 14In The Wettest County in the World, which disease kills the Bondurants' mother and sisters a decade before the story?
Spanish flu
The Spanish flu takes their mother and sisters in 1918, a loss the novel imagines scarring all three sons, who are running liquor within ten years.
Q 15Which actress plays Maggie Beauford, the former dancer Forrest Bondurant hires as a waitress, in Lawless?
Jessica Chastain
Jessica Chastain agreed to the part before she had read the script, after cinematographer Benoît Delhomme recommended her to the director.
Q 16At which European film festival did Lawless premiere in competition in May 2012 to a long standing ovation?
Cannes
Cannes gave the film a standing ovation of nearly ten minutes, and it competed there for the Palme d'Or.
Q 17In Lawless, which business do the Bondurant brothers run as a front for selling their moonshine?
A gas station
A gas station and restaurant is the brothers' cover, and it is where lawman Charlie Rakes turns up to demand a share of every bootlegger's profits.
Q 18Which Black educator and author was born into slavery in Franklin County, Virginia, decades before its moonshine fame?
Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington was born on the Burroughs farm near Hale's Ford, was freed during the Civil War, and went on to lead Alabama's Tuskegee Institute.
Q 19Franklin County, the setting of The Wettest County in the World, lies in the foothills of which mountain range?
The Blue Ridge
The Blue Ridge foothills hold the county, whose moonshine past is now archived at Ferrum College's Blue Ridge Institute and Museum.
Q 20Which Australian singer-songwriter wrote the screenplay and co-composed the score for the 2012 film Lawless?
Nick Cave
Nick Cave said much of the novel's most brutal material never reached the screen, and he turned the villain from a country cop into a city one.
Q 24The director of Lawless had earlier filmed The Road, a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by which American author?
Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy is also a writer Matt Bondurant has been compared to, thanks to the dark, violent prose of his moonshine novel.
Q 25Prosecutors at Franklin County's 1935 conspiracy trial said bootleggers had cheated the government of millions in what?
Excise taxes
Excise taxes on whiskey were at stake: prosecutors said the ring had dodged about $5.5 million of them, so the charge was fraud, not simply making liquor.
Q 26In the snowy 1930 shootout that The Wettest County in the World retells, who shot Jack Bondurant and his brother?
A local deputy
A local deputy shot both brothers, who had resisted lawmen trying to skim their whiskey profits, and both men survived.
Q 27The climactic shootout of Lawless, filmed at Red Oak Creek, ends with Charlie Rakes fleeing into what structure?
A covered bridge
A covered bridge gives the wounded Rakes nowhere to run; the one used for filming was probably built by Horace King, an enslaved bridge builder, about 1840.
Q 28Matt Bondurant writes that jars of Franklin County moonshine most often have slices of which fruit floating in them?
Peaches
Peaches take some of the heat out of the clear whiskey, he explains, and locals simply offer a taste of the fruit by name.
Q 29Which Australian director, who also made Depeche Mode music videos, adapted The Wettest County in the World as Lawless?
John Hillcoat
John Hillcoat was sent the novel by producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher, and liked that these outlaws survive instead of dying in a blaze of glory.
Q 30Which Australian actress plays Bertha Minnix, the preacher's daughter courted by Jack Bondurant, in Lawless?
Mia Wasikowska
Mia Wasikowska's Bertha is caught by the law when Jack shows off the brothers' hidden stills to her on a day trip.