Gods Of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown

 

Life is hard on Howl Mountain and memories are long.  This novel follows the life of the Docherty family.  Rory has just returned from the war, minus one leg.  He lives with his grandmother, the woman who raised him after his mother was sent to the insane asylum.  His grandmother was a prostitute but now makes her living seeing to the ills of the mountain folk.  Rory makes his living running moonshine for the man who rules Howl Mountain.

But that life is tough.  He has to outrun the federal and local revenuers weekly on his runs.  He has to match wits and motors with the other men who want to take his territory.  Falling in love with the daughter of a snake-handling preacher wasn't in his plans, but that's what's happened.

This was my first novel by Taylor Brown but it definitely won't be my last.  I was familiar with the landscape of the Appalachian mountains as I grew up in Southwest Virginia and the first spirits I ever drank was moonshine as my best friend's father got some every Friday night when the paychecks came.  Taylor Brown is an author raised in the South and he gets it right.  There's a ton of difference between reading a book set in the South written by someone who grew up there and reading one by someone who didn't.  This book is raw and tough and it is one of the few that makes me think as a woman that I get some feel for what being a man might be, how protecting his family is bred in the bone and how every day can bring a challenge to his manhood he must rise to.  Suffice it to say, I loved this novel and hope more people read it and discover the author.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.