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.

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.

I loved this book, the mountain folk lived a rough life. Making a living the only way they knew. Bootlegging and running from the Revenue r's. This book brings that to life. Well done !!

Wonderfully descriptive! Had me staying up all night to find out what the “secret “ was. I was totally drawn into this story.

The Gods of Howl Mountain was a surprisingly deep look into the early days of NASCAR and moonshine running. The descriptive text places you right in the car, letting you smell the exhaust and hear the clink of the glass jugs carried in the trunk of Rory's hot car. I spent several nights staying up late because it was too hard to put the story out of my mind to sleep. I had to see what Rory's Granny May was going to do next. Full Disclosure: I was allowed to read a copy of this book for free as a member of NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review. The opinions I have expressed are my own and I was not influenced to give a positive review.

An interesting story with odd characters. Good descriptions but sometimes they were too much and a bit over=wrought. All in all a good story.

This novel of historical, regional fiction tells the story of Rory Dochtery, a veteran of the Korean War who has returned to his Morth Carolina mountain home. The setting was vividly drawn and the voice of the characters pitch perfect. Granny May is the best character I’ve read in a very long time. Highly recommended.

“Because dying’s better than wishing you had.”

It's the 1950's and Rory Docherty has returned home from the Korean War with a wooden leg. It's hard to find good paying legitimate work with a wooden leg, so Rory has become a whisky-runner. He makes deliveries to brothels, roadhouses, and private clients. Haunted by horrific dreams of the war, he lives with his grandmother, Maybelline “Granny May” Docherty. She is known for many things on the mountain, one of which is being a healer. People come to her for various cures and treatments but refuse to look at her as she walks down the street.

Granny May raised Rory after his mother was admitted to an Asylum after a horrific attack that left her lover dead and robbed her of her ability to speak and raise her child. The identity of the attackers has never been known; however, Granny has been known to carry around in her pocket the eye of a man - could this be the guilty party?

The whisky running has gained the attention of federal agents. Add into the mix stock car racing, romance, and a snake handling preacher and you have yourself an interesting novel full of quirky characters. There are a lot of secrets on Howl Mountain. Secrets that some want to keep a secret while there are others who desperately want to know the truth.

“Sometimes when you get what you want, you don’t like it so much.”

One of the things I really enjoyed about this book was the imagery. The descriptions are clear and evoked a feeling of being there. I felt as if I were there as a quiet observer watching everything that was happening in this novel: all the violence, the harsh words, the strutting around, etc. The imagery is really one of the stars in this book. I felt as if I was experiencing the action and not just reading it.

This book is a beautifully written "gritty" southern novel which showcases a mountain where everyone knows everyone, where people vie for power, where past insults are not forgotten, wrongs need to be set right, where families have secrets and towns have healers and snake handlers. It's a rough environment - a dog eat dog type of community, if you will. The language/dialect fits the mood and the imagery in this book. This book has a melancholy feel to it. These people know poverty, they know crime, they know heartache, they know violence, they know love and they know how to survive.

Granny May was my favorite character. She's a tough old broad as my Grandmother would say. She sits in her rocking chair smoking her pipe, another quiet observer of life on the Mountain. She has lived a hard life, has made hard decisions and has done what she feels is best to raise and protect her Grandson. She is a part of the Mountain and the mountain is part of her.

There were times while I was reading this book that I forgot this book is set in the 1950's. Change the make of cars and the war Rory fought in and this could be a current day novel (perhaps exchange the whisky running for some other recreations drug).

I also enjoyed the sections that slowly unfolded telling the story of Rory's Mother and her lover. I thought this was a very nice touch. I also enjoyed how writing was different. Not just the script but in the prose. I really appreciated this as it helped set these sections apart and shows their significance to the current story.

Gritty, raw and beautifully written. This isn't a happy go lucky book, but it's a damn good one!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

As someone originally from Appalachia, I appreciate the steady calm of Brown's writing. The images are complex and evocative, often contrasting the natural wonder of the setting with the brutality of bootlegging, turf wars, and desire. At times I felt the plot did drag a bit, and I didn't need the flashbacks that depicted Rory's mother and her lover. Still, it is a well-written and researched book, and Granny was one of the best characters I've read all year.