A bottle of Old Jordan whiskey

A bottle of Old Jordan whiskey

A bottle of Old Jordan whiskey made in Zoe’s hometown, Harrodsburg, and a label depicting the distillery, run by Zoe’s sister Mattie’s husband John B. Thompson, a teetotaler and womanizer. The Thompsons lived in a column-fronted Harrodsburg mansion with their alcoholic son Philip, a Harvard dropout. Zoe fictionalized a haughty, cruel woman, who had grown up impoverished, living in a column-fronted Kentucky mansion with her wealthy, unfaithful distiller husband, a teetotaler, as their Harvard-educated son becomes a ne’er-do-well alcoholic. 

From the Collection of Eve M. Kahn.