Gods of Howl Mountain: A Novel

I received an advance reader's copy of Gods of Howl Mountain through NetGalley. Set in the 1950s in North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains, the novel focuses on Granny May and her grandson Rory as they struggle to come to terms with a traumatic past that has left Rory's mother and her daughter locked up in an insane asylum.

The opening scenes of the novel offer a view of what might seem a stereotypical mountain grandmother, rocking and smoking on the porch of her cabin. But while she does seem to be everyone's granny, offering mountain remedies for ailments and tending to her grandson and his friend, she also wields a shotgun with ease and has her own past to contend with. Plus, she isn't above a bit of malicious fun when it comes to show more those who judge her.

Rory, her grandson, home from the Korean War minus a leg, works in the moonshine trade, dodging the revenuers and locals in his big Ford. He is a somewhat reluctant participant but it is the work available to him. One night, he stumbles upon a group of frenzied Pentecostals worshipping in an old garage, speaking in tongues and handling snakes. The scenes of the church have a surreal quality as we move into the crowd with Rory, mesmerized by the chanting and dancing.

The novel itself seems to pulse with the life of the mountains and Taylor Brown uses rich prose to describe people and places. It threatens every so often to spill over into excess but Brown manages to keep control, much like his main characters controls the big Ford. His world is one of raw life: violence, sex, love, grief all rolled into complex characters. show less

Note: This book is scheduled to be released in March, 2018. I am very grateful to the author, St. Martin's Press, and Netgalley for making advanced copies available to members of Goodreads’ On the Southern Literary Trail book group.

The upcoming release of Taylor Brown’s third novel justifies the old adage that the third time is the charm. While Fallen Land is a stark road-trip through the post-apocalyptic landscape of the American South during the Civil War and The River of Kings is an unabashed love letter to Georgia’s Altamaha River, his newest book takes readers on a visit to the mountains of North Carolina, to a world that is slowly being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth century. The year is 1952 and talk is show more that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower will be elected president but that will change little in North Carolina except maybe the color of the hats ladies will be wearing (Mamie loves pink). Prohibition may have ended but the government’s tax men are still waging a vicious war with the moonshiners whose souped-up roadsters are starting to migrate from the backroads to the racetracks. While many have been forced from their lands by government reclamation projects, others cling tenaciously to the mountains that their ancestors tamed centuries before, and to the old ways that are slowly being forgotten.

It is an homage to the Scots Irish settlers who came seeking America’s egalitarian dream, but found themselves ostracized, forced hammer out a life on the inhospitable frontiers. They are represented beautifully by Granny May Docherty, whose “blood had been in these mountains a long time, two centuries nearly. Her people had cut timber with axes and crosscuts saws, building cabins no bigger than bear dens. They had raised hogs, which they turned loose to fatten on the fallen nuts of the forest, and they had grown “whiskey trees”— corn—stirring giant copper pots of mash with handmade paddles. They had fought in every war of a young nation, siding with the union when the state seceded, and they had hunted roots and beasts of every stripe, lining the mountainsides with the iron jaws of traps. They had done whatever they could to keep alive, the same as she had done, and they had died and died and died. They died in the grip of influenza or the hemorrhages of childbirth. They were crushed beneath widowmaker limbs or kicked by mules or burned in stilling accidents. Some walked off into the forest and never came back. Few died of old age.”

Life is hard for the mountain people and few escape without scars. Granny May’s grandson Rory has returned from bitter fighting in Korea minus a leg and with no job prospects aside from driving for Eustace Uptree, the Great War machine-gunner who killed hundreds and returned home and disappeared into the mountains to create a thriving whiskey business. There is also the aptly named snake-handling preacher Asa Adderholt is missing an eye, possibly due to an accident while working as a logger, and Rory’s mother, who fought off a vicious attack years before but was left so traumatized that she lost the power of speech.

Bottom line: I absolutely loved this book. It takes historical events and weaves them into the lives of well-crafted characters so skillfully that the reader is left with the satisfaction that one experiences when the last piece of a puzzle slips into place. In addition, it is chockful of Appalachian folklore and folk medicine, subjects that I find fascinating. I have read every novel that Taylor Brown has read and this one is by far his best. I highly recommend it.

*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.

FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.
*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
*1 Star – The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire. show less

The story is set in the 1950s, when hill communities like this one in North Carolina lived in self-enclosed, tight spaces filled with local history and culture. Howl Mountain is all about bootleg whiskey, guns, dark woods, small time power struggles, long-held grudges, and grim outlooks.

Rory Docherty is the central character in the story. Rory has come home from the Korean War to a broken life — a missing leg, a long-ago murdered father he never knew, a mother in a mental hospital, and a grandmother holding things together in her own ways.

Rory is consumed by what he doesn’t know about his father’s death and what caused his mother’s emotional breakdown. He knows his father was something of an odd character for Howl Mountain, and show more that he was murdered when he was found with Rory’s mother in a cabin they had transformed into a private oasis. The same incident left his mother so emotionally scarred that she hasn’t spoken a word since.

During the attack, his mother managed to fight back and pluck out the eye of her attacker. Rory’s grandmother, Granny May, still has the eye, preserved in a jar. If Rory could match the eye to its former owner, he would know who his long-held grudge is against.

In the meantime, Rory has taken a place in what seems like Howl Mountain’s chief industry — running bootleg whiskey. He runs for Eustace Uptree, the boss of Howl Mountain. He’s also deep in an unfriendly rivalry with Cooley Muldoon, another whiskey runner, with maybe the only other car on the mountain that can rival Rory’s for speed.

Somehow, in the midst of all these brewing emotions, Rory falls in love with Christine Adderholt, who he meets at a backwoods church revival and is immediately entranced. It turns out that Christine is the daughter of the revival’s pastor, Asa Adderholt, a man it’s very hard not to be suspicious about.

All of this comes together in Rory’s need to find out who’s eye that is in Granny May Docherty’s jar.

Not bright, cheery reading. Rory’s life is like a scrambled junk heap, without enough pieces to go back together, and no clear plan how to make anything at all out of it, except to find out who it was who killed his father and somehow set it right for himself (and maybe his mother). Everything is dark, and everything has this feel that, no matter what happens, things just can’t ever be right again.

Taylor Brown is good at this. show less

The whole place seemed pasted together by memory, as fragile as that, the thinnest conspiracy of soot and ash that would collapse one day under the alighted feet of a sparrow or a crow, implode on a band of trouble-seeking boys. All the past seemed like that, constructed of the most tenuous of blueprints, waiting fo the wrong wind to blow. A history you could bring crashing down in a single kick to the right beam or post, a structure risen up in ash and smoke. He had the sudden urge to find that linchpin, that column or stanchion or joist, for if he collapsed the place it might swallow up the ghosts that haunted him, the shadows that roamed in his skull. All forgotten in a tangle of timberbones.

This novel is all the things I love about show more the grit-lit genre: the juxtaposition of beautiful, introspective writing with the harsh realities of the dark, poverty-stricken, crime-ridden heart of America*.

Our protagonists here are a war-wounded moonshine-runner (Rory) and the former-prostitute turned folk-healer grandmother (Granny May) who raised him. Granny May's husband was killed in WWI, leaving her to raise their daughter in the only way she could make a living. That daughter has been institutionalized since before Rory was born, after witnessing the brutal murder of her boyfriend (Rory's assumed father) turned her mute. Rory and Granny May have managed to create a home on Howl Mountain, surrounded by a community of others living outside the structured factory towns of the valley. But federal government agents, the hot-headed son of a rival brewer, and the green-eyed daughter of a snake-handling preacher all threaten to disrupt their precarious equilibrium.

The plot gets a little overly convoluted toward the end, but the overall story is satisfying and ends with a bit of hope. (As karen points out, Mr. Brown is not a "town burner," like Donald Ray Pollock & others at the grittiest end of the genre.) I would love to read a sequel to this one with Granny May's Marijuana Kingdom.

*Although grit-lit is mostly an American genre, Ireland and Scotland have their own similar gritty contributions, including Lisa O'Donnell's [b: The Death of Bees|15818333|The Death of Bees|Lisa O'Donnell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1358353202s/15818333.jpg|18334314] (featuring the Scottish counterpart of Ree Dolly from [b: Winter's Bone|8612837|Winter's Bone|Daniel Woodrell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387717184s/8612837.jpg|1693257]) and Lisa McInerney's [b: The Glorious Heresies|24515225|The Glorious Heresies|Lisa McInerney|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1421348024s/24515225.jpg|44112788], both of which are fantastic. (We need more female American authors in this genre.) show less

1950's, South Carolina, the place Rory returns to after his service in Korea cost him the part of one leg. He returns to the mountain home of his granny, the women who raised him after his mother was committed to an asylum. Violence visited her, harm irrevocaly changed her life, and she was never able to raise her own son, never spoke again to tell who was responsible.

To read a Taylor Brown novel is to be drawn into the world he creates. His use of imagery, makes one feel as if they were actually there, observing all that happens. His characters drawn authentically, real people with real problems, flaws, soft spots, hopes and dreams. In this novel it is the world of white lightening, bootleggers, the beginning of auto racing, my husband show more a huge NASCAR fan, I was familiar with part of this. Ardent churchgoers, snake handlers, not a big fan of snakes, revenue agents and corrupt sheriffs, all under the control of a man they refer to as the King of the Montain. A time when herbs and plants were used for healing, loved this part, learning how they were used. Where a family meant everything and where violence was a way of life. There is plenty of action, revenge factors, fast cars and a love interest, alot going on but woven semlessley into the narrative. I loved every minute if it, and could have read more.

I have now read all three of this talented author's novels and enjoyed them all, though River of Kings is still my favorite. Haven't forgotten the horse though in Fallen Land. If you haven't experienced his novels yet, and you like gritty fiction mixed with great characters and some history thrown in, definitely give him a try. Don't think you'll be sorry.

This was my monthly read with Esil and Angela and as always loved their viewpoints and treasure these reads.

ARC from Edelweiss. show less

Rory Docherty returns home to North Carolina following the Korean War. He comes home haunted by the war and the loss of a leg. This story has a little bit of everything -- faith healing, bootleg liquor, dark family secrets, greed and violence. The characters are gritty and authentic, creating the long-gone atmosphere of 1950's mountain backwoods NC.

It took me a few chapters to really get into this story. It isn't the sort of book I usually read, but since I live in western NC I really wanted to get a taste of what it was like in the moonshine days. Once I got a bit into the story, I couldn't put the book down. There are portions that made me uncomfortable, but the plot was so mesmerizing I just kept reading. Sort of like an accident on show more the highway....you don't want to look, but something makes you look anyway.

This is definitely Southern fiction. The characters are authentic and it definitely pulled me into a bygone era. I am glad I live in NC now, and not back then.

Taylor Brown is the author of several books including River of Kings and Fallen Land.

**I voluntarily read an advanced readers copy of this book from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.** show less

I received a free advanced reader copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This is the first book I’ve read by Taylor Brown, but it will not be my last. His prose is beautiful, skillfully conjuring 1950s Appalachia. The characters all have phenomenal depth and are incredibly interesting. The scene at the racetrack is so well done, that I swear I could hear the roar of the engines and smell the gasoline. My heart was in my throat, and I’m not even a NASCAR fan!

I’ve rated this 4 stars, not 5, because there were times when the narrative felt bogged down, too slow, and I wondered “what’s the point”. However, there’s a chance that is simply a case of reading this book at the wrong time, personally. The show more ending compensates for any lag during the middle, as does Granny May. Lord, I love that woman. She has to be one of the best characters in contemporary fiction.

This is a book that is going to stick with me. I can tell I’ll be thinking about it for awhile. The author is doing a signing near me in April. I can’t wait to buy a finished copy. show less