In that sense, this is a novel about being haunted by the past and the secrets that the past keeps. Finding out what really happened to Rory’s mother is the backbone of the book, something that Gods of Howl Mountain returns to at will and then makes you forget about not long after it’s brought up. It turns out that Rory’s mother has been institutionalized because she lost the will to speak, and took the eye of a man who killed her boyfriend - Rory’s father - during the murder. However, that’s not even mentioning what the real impetus of the plot is. Add into this mix a bevy of corrupt policemen and revenue agents from the FBI who aren’t afraid to use guns, and that’s not to speak of the fact that one of the other main characters is Rory’s grandmother, who is a bit of witch with her potions and lotions, and you’ve got a fair bit to chew on. He’s in love with the daughter of a preacher who uses rattlesnakes in his services, and he’s also run afoul of a local stock car racer. The main protagonist, though claiming there’s just one may be a stretch, is a man named Rory Docherty, who is a Korean War veteran with the amputated leg to prove it, who runs bootleg whiskey for the local kingpin from the top of Howl Mountain to the whorehouses and roadhouses in the valley below that was artificially dammed in the 1930s. Set in the early 1950s in the mountain country of western North Carolina, the book is about moonshiners. There’s a lot going on with Taylor Brown’s third novel, Gods of Howl Mountain, that it’s hard to believe that it runs less than 300 pages.
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