Gods of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown

 

Gods of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown is one of those novels that takes over the most vulnerable parts of your soul and refuses to give them back until it is done with them. But when it does, you are better for it. It is lyrical and uplifting while tragic at its core. It is a contradiction of hope. It is, simply, what great American novels are suppose to be. This kind of writing is hard to find these days and it is with great joy that I find it not lost.

“…Morning, ma’am. Are you Maybelline Docherty? Granny May?’
‘I am. What is it I can do for you?’
The girl looked back at the car smoking in the yard.
‘That’s Cooley Muldoon,’ she said. ‘He’s engaged to a girl over in Linville? We, we had us a accident in the car last night.’
Granny May squinted at the running machine. The new sun glowed on the glass, shivered on the hood. Not a scratch on the paint.
The girl held out her hands.
‘In the…backseat of it,’ she said.
‘Ah,’ said Granny.
‘People say you make the moon tea?’
‘Come sit a spell, child. I got some already steeping. Seems I knew you were coming….”

In 1950s North Carolina, Rory Docherty is home from the war and back to running moonshine like before he left. Only Rory didn’t come back from the war the same man. Now he has a wooden leg and a heart and soul full of anger and bitterness. Home on the mountain of his childhood, he lives with his grandmother who hands out home remedies and supposed enchantments. But Rory is chasing the ghost of his mother and the men who violated her. He’s also trying to evade a rival moonshiner as long with the federal agent that is hot on his trail. What Rory doesn’t have time for is a woman. But she is there none the less. The daughter of a snake charming preacher.

Maybelline “Granny May” Docherty is against the woman for her grandson. She has been keeping him as safe as she can for years but the secrets and the past of Howl Mountain are catching up with Granny May and Rory. Now with Rory in danger, May must decide how much of the past she can let loose and perhaps, even, whose eyeball she keeps floating in the mason jar.

Fans of Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone will fall in love with the Gods of Howl Mountain. This is the culture or a rural world that has refused changed for years and a time when the chasm between light and dark was dangerously thin. There is a honor and mysticism to these characters. Their poverty does not rule them nor does the constant intrusion in their lives by the outside world. This is the early years of stock car racing just beginning to come to life as the late night runs of moonshine come slowly to an end. It is also the story of a family history steeped in tragedy and pain. The story of a son whose whole life is torn by what has happened to his mother and the family secrets kept still by the woman who raised him.

“…Who were the others done it with you?’ she asked. ‘Whose eye is in the jar?’
He tried to tell her. Tried and tried. Really seemed to want to. But his words flecked and spat shapelessly from his cut throat.
‘Oh honey,’ she said. ‘I’d kill you twice if I could.’
She took the jar of whiskey form his pocket. Unscrewed the lid and poured it out, then sniffed. Beneath the round sting of barley there was something else. Something chemical.
Strychnine.
Just as she thought.
She screwed the lid back on the jar, leaned over him.
‘Christ’s father let him die on the that cross,’ she said. ‘I understand why he done it.’ She leaned closer, whispering in his ear: ‘But Christ never had no granny like me…”

A terrific read.