One of my favorite books of 2017 was If The Creek Don't Rise, set in the remote hills of North Carolina in 1970. Now here I am again, absolutely loving another book set in the hills of NC, this time in the fall of 1952.

Ex-Marine Rory Docherty has returned from the Korean conflict missing his left leg below the knee, but that hasn't stopped him from running moonshine down into the valley below for the big boss Eustace in his souped-up car. Rory lives in the hills with his Granny May who is not anything like the granny in the Beverly Hillbillies. Yes, she loves her rocking chair and her corncob pipe, but what's in that pipe, eh? And how did she earn her living and support her family after her husband came back from the great war in a pine box? She's been taking care of Rory all his life--especially since his mother Bonni was put in an asylum. She went a little crazy after her lover was beaten to death before her very eyes and hasn't spoken a word since. But she did manage to pluck an eye from one of the hooded attackers; that probably saved her life.

This is my first taste of Taylor Brown's writing and I am hooked. His descriptions are gorgeous, putting you right there in those hills as the leaves turn to gold. And there you are riding along for some pretty exciting action as Rory zooms around those switchback, trying to avoid being caught by the revenue men. Brown has created some terrific, eccentric characters who really come to life in these pages. And Rory finds time for a little romance when he meets Christine, Pastor Adderholt's daughter at one of the church meetings where people are speaking in tongues and passing around a rattle snake. Lordy!

Some vintage Scruggs and Flatt music you might enjoy listening to while reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjLyV...

Thank you to NetGalley, Taylor Brown and St Martin's for providing me with an arc of this excellent new book. My first 5-star read of 2018!

Taylor Brown's Gods of Howl Mountain was an excellent story. From beginning to end, I had a hard time putting it down. All the characters had some built in mystery to them that added to the intrigue. I think the this is one of the first novels I have read where there wasn't really a general plot, no A to Z story. I think that aspect of it made it even more interesting because there were so many twists and turns throughout, the novel never became dull. Overall, it is a must recommend to all who enjoy a little adventure.

It’s dark and moody and oh so beautiful.

Honestly, I really didn’t like this book at the beginning. I was reading it thinking, “You know, this might be one that I don’t finish.” Then, somewhere around a fourth or a third of the way through, the characters suddenly clicked into place. Everything in the story became more vibrant. It was one of those moments as a reader where you have to remind yourself to stick with it. Some literary gems bury themselves deep in the story before you find them and that’s how it was for me with this book.

I love me some good dark southern fiction, the kind with symbolism and maybe even some real-life witchcraft. Granny is one of my new favorite southern-lit characters. She’s strong, clever, and funny but her heart beats for her daughter and grandson. She isn’t perfect, not even close, but she’s as stalwart as the chestnut tree in her yard. Rory, the protagonist is also such a unique character. Older than his years due to the intense violence of the Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War that left a disfiguring injury. His childhood as the son of a madwoman and the grandson of a whore and his adulthood as a moonshine runner hasn’t helped.

There is a lot of violence in this book, right off the bat. It’s not the shock-and-awe violence of other books though. It’s the everyday kind that people living in a harsh world with little money have to deal with. Gritty is how I would put the world that Brown has created and all the characters have to be hard to make it in such a place. The pace of the story changes through it, speeding in some places and meandering in others.

That meandering though sometimes went a tad too long for my taste, which is what made it so hard to get into the book until about Bonni’s first chapter. I think though my biggest strike against the book actually has little to do with the book itself. I hate cars, and scenes about driving, racing, and maintaining them. I knew a car would feature prominently due to Rory’s occupation but I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it despite Brown’s lovely prose. However, that won’t stop me from recommending this book to everyone because it really is a beautifully atmospheric read.


Note: I received a free Kindle edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher St. Martin’s Press, and the author Taylor Brown for the opportunity to do so.

4.5 seductive stars

Life in the fifties in this mountain community was vividly portrayed by Taylor Brown. Coming back from war is always difficult. To return to the normalcy of life is a task many face, witnessing the horridness of war, time, the smell of death, the toll it takes on your mind heart and soul.

For Rory Docherty, coming back home also meant coming back to the rural mountains of his birth. He has lost a leg to war, and returns to a place where both an internal and external war rages. His community is one of boot legging, souped up car racing, whiskey running, and filled with the aura of mysticism and folklore.

For his grandmother, Granny May, a former prostitute, folk healer, and woman who tells it like it is, having her grandson home is both a blessing and a curse. You see Granny has carried a secret kept from Rory about his mother Bonnie, who after an awful experience is left dumb, never to utter a word. She is in a facility where care is provided but words from her are never uttered. Granny loves her grandson. She is a hard woman bent by years of a difficult life, honed from the mountains she came from, but buoyed by her spirit and hardness. She is tough , she is witty, and she is ready to lay down her life for the boy she loves.

The folk of the town, are a mixture of hard living, hard driving, whiskey running people. They live rough, they talk rough, they are mountain people. They keep the outside world at bay by holding their secrets close and their guns even closer.

Rory meets a girl, Christine, the daughter of a snake handling preacher. He is attracted to her. Granny does not approve and says that some things need to be buried. As we see Rory fight off federal agents, a rival whiskey runner, and secrets, he falls for Christine and is drawn to the church where the preacher and the congregation believe in the power of the serpent to free your soul and make one commune with the spirit of god.

The story is riveting and the author makes you one with his characters, the surroundings, and life in this unrefined environment where people flock to Granny May for her healing potions and where life is ever so different from what one might have considered normal in the '50s. Mesmerizing language, followed by mesmerizing people make this tale atmospheric and moody and holds the reader in suspense as all is revealed. This is a gritty novel as gritty as the people that are portrayed and one that invites the reader into a world that they knew little about.

Thank you to Taylor Brown, St Martin's Press, and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this intriguing novel.

I struggled to get into this book so I didn’t finish it.

There is a large cast of characters here but the story is mainly focused on Korean war vet Rory who has come home to the mountain with part of his leg missing, and his Granny May who is a force to be reckoned with. There's not a lot of jobs in 1950s North Carolina, especially for someone like Rory, but moonshining is a booming business and there's money to be made delivering it provided you don't get caught. The mountain holds a lot of secrets, and so does Granny May but sooner or later things have a way of bubbling to the surface. This was a mesmerizing work of historical fiction.
4 out of 5 stars.

This was one terrific ride! Set in the the mountains of North Carolina during the 1950's, it was a tough tale of whiskey runners, whorehouses, snake handling preachers, brutal fights, the Korean War, folk medicine, working people, racing, mental hospitals, corrupt law enforcement, and lots of meanness with just a touch of good.

The writing was vivid, and the characters were memorable - especially Granny May. It’s an exciting, well-written book with a great story and a lot of little interesting tidbits I enjoyed learning.

Fabulous book. Thoroughly loved. Highly recommend!

I received this from netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home after losing a leg fighting in Korea.

Interesting story and lots of action especially the car races but I found the book lagged and was *over-wordy* in some parts. Overall, a good read and I would recommend the book.

3.25☆

I am very pleased - thank you Netgalley - to be exposed to this fine southern writer. He is one I will add to my followed list. Gods of Howl Mountain is a peek into the North Carolina mountains in 1952. We have lovely girls and hot cars and dirt roads galore and it all makes for a fast paced tale that you hate to see end.

Running moonshine was the shadowed beginning of NASCAR racing, and we also have a mention of Junior. The Junior. Johnson. But the hero of this tale is Rory Docherty, a Marine Vet who lost his clutching leg just below the knee in Korea. Home again, he and best friend Eli work daily on their pre-war Ford coupe sitting over a truck frame and suspension, with a powerful ambulance six cylinder under the hood. They are also fashioning a maple prosthetic leg and foot with an imbedded pistol in the calf, and Rory wastes a lot of gas learning how to use it confidently. Weekly he runs across the state to Raleigh to visit his mom. Eli is the nephew of Eustace, who makes the 'shine that the boys run to town and country customers. Maybelline, their Ford, is named for Granny May, the grandmother who raised Rory.

We have flashbacks to the beginning of WWI, when Maybelline and her lover marry, and he ships off to Europe, and back home in a box. May is 15 or 16, the new mother of a now fatherless Bonni, and no family of her own to depend on. She falls into the only asset she can offer at the local bordillo, where she can feed herself and her child despite the bad times.

We also have flashbacks into the early 1930's when the valley was first flooded to accommodate a power producing dam, and the severe changes this made in this mountain community. We see life then through the schoolgirl eyes of Rory's mom, Bonni and her lover Connor. Connor is murdered by three unknown hooded characters, and Bonni is so damaged mentally she has not spoken since, and was committed to the insane asylum in Raleigh. May takes on their baby Rory when the time comes, and places all her assets way up onto the mountainside, rejecting civilization altogether and raising Rory on her skill with herbs and potions learned from another old mountain granny. Granny May , 54 years old, smokes a corncob pipe and rocks on her porch of an evening, but the only time she smokes tobacco is after sex. She grows many things in the privacy of the mountain. Rory is fixated on solving the mystery of who killed his father and so harmed the mother he loves.

The bad guys are the rival Muldoon Family, who also make and run moonshine on the mountain. The girl who may prove to be the love of Rory's life is Christine Adderholt, daughter of the snake yielding preacher of the Gospel at the old service station at End-of-the-Road, the last bits of the old town before the road runs straight into the dammed lake. Christine's father's brother is the local sheriff and thus another strike against the couple.

As you can see, this is a story jam-packed with characters you will enjoy and cheer on in their good times, feel sorrow for in the bad. There are plenty of both, to keep you guessing. I want more of Taylor Brown.

I received a free electronic copy of this fascinating historical novel from Netgalley, Taylor Brown, and St. Martin's Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

This book is well written, with a unique sense of place and an era few authors write about. The characters were well developed and the story creative. However, I just didn't connect with this book the way I have others recently. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to read and review it.

I only had to read a few pages and I found myself in the back hills of North Caroline, on Howl Mountain. Rory is living with his granny and the two of them make special trips to see his mother who is living in a special home because of an event that occurred that no one likes to talk about. That’s what it’s like here on the mountain. Everything is on a need-to-know basis. Rory would like to know all the details and he will know, when the time is right. Granny makes her own homemade tinctures, remedies and potions for whatever may ail you and the folks come from many of miles to ask for granny’s help with their ailments.

Whiskey is the name of the game here up on the mountain and Rory is a runner for the drink. Since coming back from the war with his leg injury, Rory has been working for Eustace while trying to keep his dreams (or nightmares) at bay. Eustace lives with Rory and Granny since he also came back from the war. Eustace has a great setup here on the mountain with his concealed stills and his loyal crew. Some people want a piece of Eustace business and Eustace isn’t just handing it over. Meanwhile, Rory has been eyeing the preacher’s daughter, he just can’t get past her green eyes. The mountain contains many secrets and stories, some that cannot be told until the time is right.

I love stories about the Appalachian Mountains region. I love how dark and mysterious these stories can get, how the past and present twist around each other as the story unfolds. This novel webbed and flowed as I read it, sometimes picking up in pace and excitement and other times, I sat with granny on the front porch, as she smoked her pipe, and waited for the spirits to arrive at night. Descriptive language filled me as I read, I heard the colored glass bottles clinking as they hung from the old tree out front and I saw them all gathered together at the church, their arms lifted, some speaking in tongues, as they danced amongst themselves, worshipping their God. Another great novel about a time and place in history featuring individuals living their own lives on a mountain with its own rules. 4.5 stars

I received a e-copy of this novel from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest opinion. Thank you for allowing me to read this novel.

I also won a physical copy of this novel from a Goodreads Giveaways. I am thrilled to get a physical copy of this novel so I can reread it. Thank you Goodreads!

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2158029760?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

This book was fascinating on so many levels. The giving of 4 instead of 5 stars in part because the flow was interrupted more than a few times by overly descriptive passages describing scenery followed by WHOOSH back into the story. It was a bit off-putting.

That being said Rory Docherty and Granny May are characters I will long remember. The story is before ADA, before PTSD was a common term, and we brought boys back from war broken. Rory was broken by the Korean War including emotionally, mentally, and physically (losing a leg). He came home to the 1950s backwoods mountains of North Carolina and struggles to find his place. Without a leg it is hard so he goes to what he can do...whiskey running. This is a key detail in his growth and how the story flows.

This book has heartbreak, laughter, tears, and makes you hope for more stories of Rory and his Granny along with his mama.

A very good read. I would definitely recommend this book. The characters were interesting and well rounded. It was definitely a page turner.

I received a free copy of this book from the author. I had the opportunity to review or not.

A young soldier, Rory Docherty, home from the war minus his left foot, returns to his roots and drives a bootlegging car for the local whiskey king. He has returned to the land he loves and the grandmother who has raised him after a devastating attack put his mother in a mental institution.

The story revolves around Rory’s anguish for his mother, survivor’s guild after the war, a strange young woman whom he has taken a shine to, and dealing with the corruption that is ruining his home. Add into this mix the beginnings of car racing, revenge with a competitive driver, and revenuers chasing bootleggers and Taylor Brown delivers an exciting adventurous tale.

With expert descriptions, Mr. Brown brings Howl Mountain to life. His characters are well developed and believable. Another successful novel by one who knows his craft

Gods of Howl Mountain is an action packed, historical fiction novel that takes you on a wild ride with a whiskey runner named Rory through the mountain side of North Carolina in the 1950’s. Brown invites you into this intriguing story with a descriptive writing style that makes each page seem so vividly realistic. A story that is full of family, love, drama, humor, sadness, and sometimes violent or gruesome backwoods fights for territory that could only take place in the South in the height of the 1950’s moonshine stills.

It is easy to get drawn into a world unlike any other as you see Rory battle with demons that haunt him both in his past and his present. A Korean War Hero who lost a limb returns to find that everything he left behind when he left for the war is not the same. Flashbacks from the past help to explain why things that are happening in the present make things so difficult at times for Rory. Overall, an action-packed fast paced read that will not disappoint.

Hmmm.....interesting topic, writing style was fine, but I did not like the story or any of the characters. Only my commitment to never abandon a book got me to finish this book.

It takes place in post-Korean War time in the middle of the bootlegging mountains of the south. A one-legged Veteran of the war returns to the mountains of his hometown and lives with his grandmother who raised him. Grandma was a hooker turned medicine woman whose daughter was involved in a horrific murder of her boyfriend. She fought her attackers and pulled out one of his eyes and then has not said another word. And a church whose parishoners speak in tongues and handle poisonous snakes. I was completely horrified when the grandson's best friend sleeps with the grandma in order to cure his erectile dysfunction.

Need I say more? Weird premise and totally unsympathetic characters. I didn't really care about who lived and who died. I only finished it because I felt responsible for reviewing the book.

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 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.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2130269483