a startling portrait of America's soul.' -Bobbie Ann Mason, 'It's the characters, so wonderfully vibrant and alive in their all-too-human variety-scared, tightly wound, angry, damaged, yet resourceful and resilient, some honorable, some not-that demonstrate Brown's prodigious talent. haunting.' - Library Journal (Starred Review) 'I read Taylor Brown's new novel in a state of astonishment-at the bold undertaking, the exhilarating narrative, the vivid language. Praise for The River of Kings: 'Drawing comparisons to James Dickey's Deliverance and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. With gritty and atmospheric prose, Taylor Brown brings to life a perilous mountain and the family who rules it. When Rory's life is threatened, Granny must decide whether to reveal what she knows.or protect her only grandson from the past. His grandmother, Maybelline 'Granny May' Docherty, opposes this match for her own reasons, believing that 'some things are best left buried.' A folk healer whose powers are rumored to rival those of a wood witch, she concocts potions and cures for the people of the mountains while harboring an explosive secret about Rory's mother - the truth behind her long confinement in a mental hospital, during which time she has not spoken one word. In the mill town at the foot of the mountains - a hotbed of violence, moonshine, and the burgeoning sport of stock-car racing - Rory is bewitched by the mysterious daughter of a snake-handling preacher. Between deliveries to roadhouses, brothels, and private clients, he lives with his formidable grandmother, evades federal agents, and stokes the wrath of a rival runner. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted '40 Ford coupe. Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood - a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint.

'A fresh, authentic, and eloquent new voice in American fiction.' - Robert Morgan, New York Times bestselling author of Gap Creek In Gods of Howl Mountain, award-winning author Taylor Brown explores a world of folk healers, whiskey-runners, and dark family secrets in the high country of 1950s North Carolina.

The gods of howl mountain