Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this great book. My first written by Taylor Brown. And for sure not the last one. The story of life in 1950's North Carolina was superb to read with very interesting characters well developed. I'm not going to repeat the fascinating story about Rory and his granny living and struggling daily life in the mountains. But highly recommend reading this book.

This was my first read of Taylor Brown and I was simply bowled over by this multilayered historical southern, character driven, family drama. Brown beautifully and atmospherically evokes the mountainous Appalachians of North Carolina and its quirky, eccentric people and their secrets. Rory Docherty is back from the Korean War, with his troubled memories and pictures of death that haunt him. After losing his leg, he now makes his way with a wooden leg, which slows him down considerably. Work is scarce and Rory is a bootlegger, a colourful profession that attracts federal agents. Rory's mother, Bonni, has been residing in an asylum where she has never uttered a word since a harrowing and brutal attack. Rory lives with the force of nature that is Maybelline, his implacable and unforgettable folk healer 'witch' Granny May, with an unrivalled reputation for her potions, herbs and medicines.

Granny May has brought up Rory since his mother was incapable of doing so and held her tongue, keeping shattering family secrets. As Rory becomes fixated with the daughter of a snake handling preacher, Granny is less than happy, and when his life becomes endangered, she finds herself in a quandry, does she protect him or reveal the secrets of the past? As the narrative shifts from the past to the present, Brown presents a dark tale of violence, survival, deception, greed, revenge and death with its parallels in the Korean War. Brown writes in sublime poetic prose, with wonderful imagery and descriptions. The highlight of this novel is unquestionably the flawed and compelling characters and none more so than Granny May. Rory is indelibly marked by the war and death, his mind unable to forget as his demons wreak havoc. This is superb historical fiction, with its world of poverty, stock car racing, snakes, moonshine, preachers, love and adventure that captures the imagination of the reader with ease. A fantastic and highly recommended read. Many thanks to St Martin's Press for an ARC.

It's the fall of 1952, and Rory Docherty is back from the war in Korea. He lost one leg below the knee, but at least he is alive. The Gods of Howl Mountain are alive and sinister in this new book by award-winning author, Taylor Brown. Alive, that is, as angry yet fearful, poverty-stricken, gun-toting, secretive, and superstitious bootleggers.

There is safety in the remote sections of Appalachia, and there is danger, especially from competing bootleggers. Back home in the mountains of North Carolina, Rory returns to moonshining -- and to finding out who destroyed his mother. Oh, she is still alive, but she hasn't spoken since being raped so many years ago. The rape that produced Rory and sent his mother to a mental institution, left him to be raised by his grandmother, the herbal healer Maybelline (Granny May).

At times Brown's prose is almost poetic in its description of the beauty that is Appalachia and North Carolina, as well as the danger found in some remote mountain areas. Gods of Howl Mountain will take you along on the struggle between good and evil, between justice and revenge, as Rory's life is threatened, and Granny May finally realizes who hurt her family so many years ago. This powerfully evocative novel will be in stores March 20, 2018.

What Made This Reviewer Grumpy?

Misspelling the contraction of "would have" and "could have" as "would of" and "could of", rather than the correct "would've" and "could've".

Look for me online as The Grumpy Book Reviewer.

I found this book a really frustrating experience to read. I really had no idea what was going on for most of the book, and although there is plenty of dramatic tension, and the sort of atmosphere you can chew on, the underlying plot doesn't reveal itself until near the very end of the book. This is a kind of slice of life book if it was written by Stephen King, with a family of moonshiners living in the backwoods, doing their rednecky witchy things, competing against the forces of modernity which want to intrude on their happy little universe.

I thought this was going to be my kind of book, and in the end I was sadly mistaken. There are some excellent characters in the book, particularly the matriarch of the family - Granny - but I never really got the sense that the book was going anywhere. By the time I got to the explanation of the catalyst in the story, I was ready to be done with the book. If I was not reading it for review I definitely would have abandoned this well before the halfway mark.

I am sure that there are readers who will enjoy this sort of thing. I was expecting some sort of quasi-mystical redneck tale set in the backwoods of America, and I really don't know what I got instead.

I received a review copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I hate to say this, but I really struggled with this book. It took what felt like forever to get into the storyline at all, and even then, I just felt "meh" about it all. And I honestly can't pinpoint why. The writing was excellent - incredibly descriptive and vivid. You really were transported to the mountain life of 1950's North Carolina. The characters were well-developed and very realistic. It was gritty and rough, with tragedy and struggles and attempts to overcome the fates that life deals everyone. It's about families and stereotypes and survival. And it's good. It just simply did not resonate with me. There are a lot of 4 and 5 star reviews of this book, and those reviews are entirely accurate, I'm sure. I can see how so many really enjoyed it - I just wasn't one of them. Having said that, I actually would recommend it because I think I'm just an anomaly with an otherwise good book.

A quick read, you’ll enjoy getting to know Rory and Granny. You’ll be swept up in their lives on the mountain. The characters are well described and the story flows easily.

Author is excellent at describing the scene, environment and interactions but these details often overwhelm the actual story and characters. Personally, I prefer more story and character development.

Similes and metaphors and adjectives – oh my. To say the writing in this book was descriptive is to say WWII was a skirmish. Sometimes the embellished phrasing was so distracting that I’d find my mind wandering off somewhere, digressing into that distraction. I knew there was too much description when I began to speed read through it.

This is the story of Rory, a Korean War vet, trying to adjust to life back home on Howl Mountain. He lives with his grandma, Granny May, who raised him because his mother, mute from an earlier trauma, resided in a mental institution. It’s the story of dismal, sad lives. It’s also the story of a tough, resilient people, people who loved and protected one another. There’s no warm and fuzzy love, however, in these pages.

The book was peppered with violence, bloodshed, dissension, confrontations, fights and feuds. These were bitter folks, with long memories, living in the strife of past and present. There was no such thing as serene mountain life in this book.

The story was disarming and the characters thoroughly real – some frightening, some harsh, very few likable – but real. The storyline was well done and I enjoyed the way the author kept us guessing as to who was ‘the bad guy’ and then solved the mystery.

Although I enjoyed the book, I hesitate to give it five stars, because the extensive use of descriptions was overkill for me. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

4.5 stars Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the Advanced copy of of this book. Publication date is in March 2018.

Taylor Brown is the male equivalent of Rene Denfeld. No one tells a story better. Their mastery of words is beyond the average author. The descriptions they use are unparalleled. They can take 5 pages to describe how a leaf hangs from a tree - and you are so involved that you want to read every word. The minute I saw that Brown had another book coming out I began to search for it.

This novel is centered in the Appalachians, circa 1950. Rory, maimed from his service in the Korean War, has moved back to his roots, and is illegally running whiskey. Rory lives with his Granny, Granny May, who is the area mountain top healer. His mother is mute and in the local mental institution due to a past incident, where she had to fight for her life.
The story tells of Rory's best friend Eli, Christine, a girl he falls in love with whose father is the local serpent handling pastor, his nemesis Cooley Muldoon, the ever elusive Eustace and his constant evading of federal agents while running his bootleg whiskey.

A great historical novel high-lighting the well known story of running moonshine.

Gods of Howl Mountain is a well-written book that explores the life of Rory, a handicapped moonshiner, and his experiences and dealings with a rival clan in the foothills of 1950's North Carolina. Nostalgic is the mood it left me in, smiling at the memories. This book could very well be set in my hometown, built of mill villages in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. So many things are familiar. Running moonshine in a retrofitted car and the "feds" being referred to with "that look" on your face, snake handlers in the house of God and healers making home visits to cure what ailed ya...these and so many more childhood memories are brought to mind while reading this novel. Taylor Brown did an amazing job painting a realistic picture of this backwoods area. It definitely gets my recommendation.
Thank you, NetGalley, for the opportunity to access this book in exchange for an honest review.

I received an advance reading copy (arc) of this book from NetGalley in return for a fair review. I am not sure why I even requested a copy of this book as I never read this kind of thing, but the premise of a Korean War veteran returning home with a wooden leg, going to work for his uncle who runs a moonshine business sounded interesting. Unfortunately, it really wasn't my cup of tea. The only character that had any appeal was the grandmother who once ran a brothel, but even she couldn't carry the novel on her own. Taylor Brown writes with a poetic bent that slows down the story. I found the flowery descriptions distracting as there were just too many of them sentence after sentence. Snake worshippers, moonshiners and a former madam mixed with another woman who resides in an institution along with some bad guys just didn't keep my interest. On a positive note, it was a quick read, but not a great one.

I won't be posting reviews, as I did not finish this book. First, the writing style was awful. Nothing flowed, similes made no sense, and it was all so contrived. It was tedious reading. Second, there didn't seem to be a story. Third, the characters and their dialog were distasteful. I found no reason to continue reading after 20% mark.

The Gods of Howl Mountain, set in the wildness of North Carolina in the 1950's just after the Korean War, depicts a way of life in prose and imagery so vividly you can picture it. Central to the story are Rory and his Grandma, and to a degree, Rory's love, his ambulance-engined rum runner, Maybelline. Granny May has lived all her life on the mountain, knowing every plant and its properties. She's done whatever it takes to live and provide for her family, and her knowledge of herbs and poultices puts big pharma to shame. Rory left part of a leg over in Korea, but he too knows the mountainous trails and ways of evasion, but he's still a young man and has a life to forge. Taylor Brown. How is it that I have never read anything by him before. This being the first will not be the last of his books that I read.

I spent a little more time reading this than I should have because I was so, so enthralled with the setting and characters. It's the 1950s, right after WWII, and wounded soldier Rory Docherty returns home and begins running whiskey as a bootlegger. He lives with Granny May, a bit of a famous and infamous character in the mountains of North Carolina where the story is set. Brown's character and setting development is amazing and it caused me to not really be able to put this book down. I could easily picture myself there next to Rory, riding shotgun in Maybelline as he traversed North Carolina backcountry. The way the past was interwoven with the present was really interesting, as well, with the story of Rory's mom and what happened to her to strike her dumb, interwoven with the current events. One learns that the past can affect the present, and the smallest actions can have lasting reactions.

This was not my type of book but the author has excellent writing skills.

In this historical fiction, we meet a slew of unique characters that have been traumatized by war, violence, and poverty. Rory a Korean war veteran who has returned to Grannie Mae's home in rural Wilkes Couty of North Carolina missing a leg drives some souped-up race cars through the nights delivering moonshine and along the way become infatuated with the local serpent preachers daughter. Will Rory find and enact vengeance on the man who left his mother so traumatized that she resides in the local insane asylum? Are the men who drive and build these suped-up cars destined to start a national trend? I am always pleased with a book if I come away with some knowledge or wisdom that will stay with me, this book has done that and more. Will there be a sequel? I do hope so, I think this would make a great movie. Justin Beil as Rory? #BookReview #GodsofHowlMountain

The Gods of Howl Mountain tells the story of Rory Docherty, a whiskey-running veteran of the Korean War and Granny May, his spunky, folk healer grandmother, living in the mountains of North Carolina. The story unfolds as Rory struggles with his experiences in Korea, the questions about his institutionalized mother’s mysterious past, and as he makes a living running bootleg whiskey through the mountains. I enjoyed everything about this novel.

The characters were so well developed and interesting. Rory was the main character but I felt like Granny May was the most impactful. She was definitely my favorite and the most memorable character in this story. I know nothing about cars and could care even less but the effect that Maybelline, Rory’s souped up Ford coupe, had on him was well done. It added one more layer of interest to the character. In fact, there was a lot of car talk throughout the book. Something I would have thought would cause me to become bored or disinterested. Instead, I found it added to the story, like I was sharing something with the people of the mountain community.

The writing was engaging and atmospheric, I was transported to the mountains of 1950’s North Carolina every time I picked up this novel. There was a lot going in this story - the discovery of Rory’s mother’s assailant and her lover’s murderer, his relationship with the serpent handling preacher’s daughter, his own inner struggles, the trials and tribulations of whiskey running - but it was all very well organized. Taylor Brown is a phenomenal storyteller. (To me his storytelling is reminiscent of Stephen King and his writing style of George R.R. Martin – quite the combination!).

I would highly recommend this one and look forward to enjoying more written by Taylor Brown. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity read and review this wonderful book.

Gods of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown is set in the NC mountains and is about running moonshine, fast cars and the early days of stock car racing. Though not a fan of racing or moonshine for that matter I liked this book. It is a story of people doing what they must do to survive and the price they must pay for that existence and long held secrets. This story also features mountain folklore, corrupt government officials, sex and even healers. I would definitely be interested in reading more from this author.
#moonshine, #race cars, #mountain healers,

This story is an excellent look into life in the mountains during the cutthroat bootlegging days of the 1950’s when families were seeking to topple one another for the empire of alcohol sales. We’re given the matriarch, Granny Mae, who is crusty and tough, but knows the herbal remedy for whatever ails a person. She is also always ready to protect her grandson, whom she has raised from infancy and who is an alcohol runner for the reigning bootlegger on the mountain. You will enjoy several characters in this first novel by Taylor Brown.