ICYMI: Taylor Brown's five-star, 1950s North Carolina-set novel offers mountain clans, whiskey runners, folk healers, family conflict, and dark, brooding woodland settings. I loved it.
Rory Docherty has returned to rural North Carolina with a wooden leg and haunting memories of his time fighting in the Korean War.
He's running whiskey to juke joints, brothels, and other seedy spots in his 1940 Ford, driving fast, avoiding federal agents, and living with his grandmother, a healer with strong opinions about Rory's love interest, a snake-handling preacher's daughter in the mill town nearby.
Family secrets and conflicts come to a head as The Gods of Howl Mountain reaches a dark, brooding, beautiful crescendo.
Brown’s descriptions are intensely arresting. He delves deeply and deftly, cutting to the quick and avoiding what in less skilled hands could have been caricatures of North Carolina mountain folk.
I loved every bit of this story.
Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book?
Taylor is also the author of Pride of Eden (a book I own that is still on my to-read list), Fallen Land, a title I loved and included in the Greedy Reading List Six Great Historical Fiction Stories about the Civil War, and the upcoming (to be published next week) historical fiction novel Wingwalkers. Stay tuned for that review, coming soon!