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Jeb Stewart Harrison is a freelance writer, songwriter, musician and painter in San Rafael, California. Jeb’s debut novel, Hack, was published by Harper Davis Publishers in August 2012. In 2015 he received his MFA from Pacific Lutheran University at the tender age of 60. His second novel, The Healing of Howard Brown, won the 2017 Independent Press Award for literary fiction. His third novel, American Corporate, was published in 2018. Jeb was born and raised in Kentfield, California, and has lived in Boulder, CO; Missoula, MT; Hollywood, CA; Scottsdale, AZ; Indianapolis, IN, Ridgefield, CT, and Stinson Beach, CA.
Reviewed by Grant Leishman for Readers' Favorite
The Healing of Howard Brown by Jeb Stewart Harrison is a return to the epic tales of the deep South. When 60-year-old retired English teacher Howard Brown Jr. revisits his roots in the bayous of Louisiana, he is taken on a journey of discovery and given an opportunity to rediscover himself and find out who he is and who he is meant to be. As Howard and his wife Sandy wait patiently for his father to die, Howard’s sister Sisi is creating her own unique brand of havoc both within the Californian family but also in the backwoods of Louisiana where the Brown family roots are located. Howard has suffered from chronic pain all over his body from numerous problems and has been hopelessly hooked on opioids to manage it for a number of years. When his seemingly crazy sister disappears, Howard is forced to return to his roots both to try to find Sisi but also to look at the land his father has left the pair in the bayous. What Howard actually discovers is that he knew so little about his family’s history, his father, his sister and himself. The journey to meet his cousins in St Francisville turns into a real journey of self-discovery for the whole family.
It’s a long time since I’ve read a book of this style – old-fashioned contemporary literature written with a massive dose of “good ole boy” Southern humor, redneck nature, gentlemanly conduct, and self-deprecation. I found The Healing of Howard Brown to be a really refreshing change from the genre-driven fashion of the day. Author Jeb Stewart Harrison really got inside the heads of the characters and they were true characters. From Howard Jr., the drug-addicted retiree who effectively was just waiting for his father to die and release him from his all-powerful control, presumably so he could then just fade away quietly himself, through to the passel of second cousins in Louisiana who were the archetypal good ole boys. Sister Sisi was a fascinating mixture of mental health issues and deviousness but all of the characters contributed to this incredibly dysfunctional family. The writing style was true to the environment and the descriptive language, when conveying the miasma that is bayou country, was so eloquent that I could also smell the rotting moss and the stagnant water as the boat pushed through the swamp country channels. This was a fantastic read and it didn’t shirk from asking the big questions of Howard Brown Jr. and attempting to answer them. I can definitely recommend this book.
