Gerry Harlan Brown has lived most of his life in the Bowling Green, Kentucky area. Stints at a factory, a farm, and painting houses have been mixed in with periods as a railroader, a volunteer community crisis counselor, and a professional fire chief. Along the way he acquired an Associate of Arts degree and completed multiple coursed in leadership at the University of Virginia and the National Fire Academy. He credits his 29 years in the fire service for providing the greatest influence on his writing style. For it was by encountering real people from all walks of life, at their best and bravest to their most devastated and petty, which gave him the opportunity to wrestle monsters, included—as ludicrous as it may seem—squirrels, white and otherwise.

Author Gerry Harlan Brown is celebrating the release of his debut novel, White Squirrels & Other Monsters, which officially released to retail on Wednesday, April 28, 2020, from WordCrafts Press. This alternately humorous and heartwrenchingly poignant tale lands squarely in the realm of Southern fiction, as quaint and charming as its Bowling Green, Kentucky, setting.

“Old people been passing stuff down to the young’uns ever since there’s been old people. That is how Woody Patterson explains the genesis of his storyteller role to his great nephew in White Squirrels & Other Monsters,” explains Gerry Brown. “I have a fascination with family storytellers, in particular, how they keep their stories straight generation after generation. Accuracy depends to some degree on how far back one goes, yet Woody manages to lay out the true Patterson history over a 200-year span to his “not that smart” nephew using only the accounts of two succeeding ancestors and his own firsthand knowledge. Certainly, I hope the work entertains, stirs some emotions, perhaps even leads the reader to think. My primary aim, however, is to remind folks that we are all members of one family, regardless of name—something Woody came to realize and passed on.”

Kin Patterson is one sorry individual.

He’s sorry he is the last Patterson; sorry that at 27 years of age all he has to show for his life is failure; sorry that the best part of any day is getting plastered with the other pitiful excuses he calls friends.

It’s no wonder his wife left him. It’s no wonder he’s facing bankruptcy. So, when word comes that a 90-year-old great-uncle he has never met wishes to meet with his sole heir, it’s no wonder that Kin imagines a fat inheritance that will be the answer to all his woes.

He immediately travels to the old family home in Bowling Green, Kentucky. But to his deep disappointment, Kin discovers Uncle Woody is not near death, nor is he senile or feeble. He is still mentally sharp, and as Kin painfully discovers, still able to work his BB gun, for Woody shoots him at first sight.

Having dealt with his own ration of strife, Woody doesn’t care to cut Kin any slack. Neither does Moby, a white squirrel that declares war on both men.

White Squirrels & Other Monsters is published in the US by WordCrafts Press (www.wordcrafts.net) and distributed globally by Ingram Content Group, the world’s largest distributor of physical content.

Product Details:

Hardback: 252 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1948679978

MSRP: $29.99

Trade Paperback: 288 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1952474026

MSRP: $16.99

Publisher: WordCrafts Press (April 28, 2020)

Language: English

also available in all major eBook formats.

About The Author:

Gerry Harlan Brown has lived most of his life in the Bowling Green, Kentucky area. Stints at a factory, a farm, and painting houses have been mixed in with periods as a railroader, a volunteer community crisis counselor, and a professional fire chief. Along the way he acquired an Associate of Arts degree and completed multiple coursed in leadership at the University of Virginia and the National Fire Academy. He credits his 29 years in the fire service for providing the greatest influence on his writing style. For it was by encountering real people from all walks of life, at their best and bravest to their most devastated and petty, which gave him the opportunity to wrestle monsters, included—as ludicrous as it may seem—squirrels, white and otherwise.

Many of the life lessons Gerry learned along the way have been published in firefighting journals. White Squirrels & Other Monsters is his first novel.