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OUR STATE MAGAZINE / NORTH CAROLINA
October 2003 / Volume 71; Number
5
The action of Skip Brooks novel unfolds amid the primeval splendor of the Great Smoky Mountains at the turn of the
20th century. It is the self-proclaimed dominion of Walker Tom Monteith, a serial killer who easily wins the trust
and affection of young women and then brutally murders them. While his gruesome odyssey is the arc that frames the story,
many other mountain folk who inhabit the region have embarked on their own quests. Some have come to the southern Appalachians
to confront their pasts or perhaps find their futures. All have a fierce attachment to this wild, beautiful land, and they
look to the mountains for solace, inspiration, and even wisdom. These characters are depicted with incisive detail and cultural
authenticity. Their paths cross, and destinies entwine in often circuitous and suspenseful ways.
As the places portrayed in the book actually existed, vivid descriptions
of towns, encampments, caverns, peaks, streams, and hollers give readers the same intimate knowledge of the landscape to which
the characters are privy. We despair when the logging industry invades the area to raze the virgin wilderness for profit.
The lumber companies bring jobs, income, and comforts that the mountain folk could once only dream about, but the price paid
for this newfound prosperity is destruction of the environment. This murderous treatment of the environment is a metaphor
for the killings of innocent, young lives at the hands of Monteith. The sense of dread and helplessness is palpable. As the
loggers harvest an ever-increasing acreage of trees, the number of Monteith s victims grows. Neither can be stopped, and the
losses are irrevocable. Tensions converge and rise to a powerful climax.
Ultimately, the mountains exact justice for the victims in a way that at
first seems surprising but then feels inevitable and absolutely right. Skip Brooks artfully weaves a richly textured, dark
but riveting tale. Monteiths Mountains is his first novel, and it bodes well for his next literary endeavor.
Kestal Phillips, Jr.
FIRST DRAFT
The Magazine of The Alabama Writer's
Forum
Spring 2003 Review by Julia Oliver Review by
Tuscaloosa resident Skip Brooks lived for several years
in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where he hiked trails and camped in the Smoky Mountains. His first novel convincingly recreates
that terrain as it was a hundred years ago. The main time frame is a five-month period in 1902, with flashbacks to the 1800s.
According to the Authors Notes at the end of the book, towns and settlements, peaks and hollers, creeks and ridges are real,
as are some of the characters.
The Prologue's introduction of Goodman Brant, a young Canadian of Mohawk-Cherokee parentage who
has come to the Southern Appalachians to seek his past and find his future, indicates Brant will be the protagonist. However,
it becomes apparent in Chapter Two that the narrative is powered by a riveting atagonist.
A literary high point
is the development of the character Walker Tom Monteith, a serial killer who can hold his own with famous psychopaths of history
and fiction. Some other characters who get considerable space and attention add Appalachian ambience but have little
if anything to do with the central storyline.
The text is sprinkled
with genealogical sequences and unusual names like Matthew Mark Luke John Brown, Friendly Pennsylvania, Fundamental Delaware,
Elegant Virginia. The latter three are siblings of Fair Carolina Monteith, the villains mother and last survivor of seven
women who shared a polygamous lifestyle with Black John Walker, a hellfire and brimstone mountain preacher.
Brooks leaves a few loose
ends dangling, but he certainly has a canny instinct for writing psychological suspense. The leisurely, around-the-campfire
style shifts to another level whenever Walker Tom Monteith, who loves the women he murders, comes on the scene. At those times,
the prose becomes electrifyingly taut, and the writer is at the top of his game. Or mountain, in this case.
THE ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES
January 2003
Review by Bob
Nuefeld
Monteith's Mountains, a solid work with noble intentions . . .No need to get uppity about themes and symbolism when
a writer savors details and realistic quirks of nature, symbolism takes care of itself. .
The main character in Brooks' tale Walker Tom Monteith is an anti-Christ, a serial murder of
young women, whose pathology includes a childhood visitation by Christ, a brutal rivalry with his lordly, polygamist father
and a rejection by his lustful mother. "The Lord giveth and the Lord giveth again," he intones as he awakens one morning beside
a Bryson City girl he'd wooed, loved and stabbed. (C)haracter development take the form of psychological briefs, such as this
analysis of Monteith by a sheriff who had pursued Montieth to his Smoky Mountain refuge. "Something awful must have happened
in that valley. Something that hurt so much, Walker Tom couldn't heal. Now he's got to keep on killing before it can hurt
him again."
Walker Tom Monteith must also track down and kill the dark-skinned Indian fellow who'd witnessed
him murder a man caught in a bear trap. He obsession goes beyond self-preservation. The Indian, Goodman Brant (yes, that's
his name) represents a goodness that Walker Tom feels, will require a fight-to-the-death in the end. There are other interesting
characters in Brooks' turn-of-the-century regional epic including Taylor Henry, an independent young woman who runs a logging
camp (Brooks based her on a real-life Hazel Creek figure).
Brooks has savored the starkly double-natured spirit of the southern mountains and has figured
out Destiny with a capital D.
THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW
January
2003
Review by Alice Logsden
This novel takes place primarily in the year 1902 in the Great Smoky Mountains of
Tennessee and North Carolina, a time when great changes began to sweep the region. Poor farmers whose families had for generations
tilled ceaselessly to eke out a living found employment with large, eastern logging and mining operations that moved into
the area after depleting resources elsewhere. These companies offered hope or a better future, yet simultaneously destroyed
that very thing. This area today is dotted with company towns which flourished only as long as the profit margin held up.
This is the historical backdrop for a showdown between two men. David "Goodman" Brant is a young man of Mohawk and
Cherokee descent. Having lived most of his life with his father's people in Canada, he has just arrived in the mountains of
his mother's people when he witnesses a cold-blooded murder. Walker Tom Monteith, the son of a fervent though unorthodox mountain
preacher, is plagued by demons from his past, a loner whose insane rage has claimed countless victims. The third person in
this mix is a young woman, Taylor Henry, who must also come to terms with her past before she can claim her destiny.
This
is a taut thriller, exploring the parallels between love and loss, reconciliation and destruction, hope and regret. Each character
is fully developed, leaving no doubt as to why they act the way they do. Skip Brooks does an excellent job of interweaving
the various stories, and rewards the reader with a dramatic and unexpected finish.
KING KUDZU MAGAZINE
Review by Foster Dickson
November
2002
Monteiths Mountains, the freshman novel by Tuscaloosa resident Skip Brooks, is a rough-hewn, but well-woven story
based around Walker Tom Monteith, a man living in the Smoky Mountains around the turn of the century. Now, this is not just
a novel about some guy who sits around in the mountains Brooks has created a unique character whose background of unorthodox
religion, mountain life, physical abuse, incest, and polygamy mesh together to form a man who suffers from an almost mythical
brand of psychosis. In short, Walker Tom is a murderer with strong family ties.
The novel is meshed together from
multiple tales. The story builds itself starting with some background about Walker Toms mother, a fiery woman whose father
named all of his twelve children after states, e.g. Fair Carolina Monteith, and his father, a backwoods preacher with seven
wives and his own little place in the sun. Along side those lives, we get the stories of Taylor Henry, a young woman living
in a logging camp near Walker Toms secluded cabin; Goodman Brant, an Indian who has retreated to the wilderness to find his
"spirit bear;" and Sheriff Tick Henry, a former Western lawman living in North Carolina. Each one has their own tale, their
own background, and are brought together by the strange Walker Tom. Of course, thats not mentioning the minor players, like
his little sister Lolie, who he gets pregnant when she is thirteen, and who subsequently disappears.
In a novel about
man-hunting, there is a lot of good depiction of Appalachian living. Walker Tom is hunting women, and then, when Goodman Brant
witnesses him committing a murder, he hunts Goodman. Tick is hunting Walker Tom. And in an odd way, Taylor is hunting Goodman,
who she sees briefly in the forest and falls in love with him at first sight. Goodman is also hunting Taylor, remembering
the same day. All the while, the interweaving of mountain living is happening in every sequence. Brooks spares us the lengthy
diatribes about the daily humdrum, and gives the reader good dialogue, interesting characters, and slips in the details around
the story, instead of the other way around.
After all, the best quality of Monteiths Mountains is the storytelling.
The narrative style is quite odd, but it works. There are shifts in time, but the reader is aided by each chapter heading
giving a date. In places, the character's inner thoughts are written as narrative, interrupting the third person narrator,
but however odd, it works. In some cases, shifting narration can be flighty and abstruse, but it isn't in this book. Deep
down, this novel is sort of murder mystery, but isn't petty like some. There's depth of character and we're spared the stereotypes.
It's definitely worth reading.
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY
August 19, 2002
Page Two / Internet Edition [c]2002
First Fiction at the Regionals
By Robert Dahlin
Monteith's Mountains (Oct.) by Skip Brooks begins "in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and it really is
Gatlinburg. You can trace the characters' steps in town," says Judith Geary, senior editor at High Country Publishers of Boone,
N.C. Describing the house as "a small publishing company focusing on fiction and memoir," Geary says that Brooks, who grew
up in Baltimore, moved to Gatlinburg in 1970 and now lives in Tuscaloosa, Ala. The Appalachian Mountains, where Walker Tom
Monteith confronts his personal demons, are "the real meat of the book," she adds. "This is a suspense thriller set in 1900,
and the plot hangs on a serial killer, which makes it as real as today."
LOCAL REALTOR WRITES HISTORICAL SUSPENSE NOVEL
By Markeshia Ricks
Tuscaloosa
News Staff Writer
August 13, 2002 [c]2002
Skip Brooks, a local Realtor-turned-author, combined his search for
his wife's ancestors and his quest for a creative outlet into a book. He said he hopes the suspense novel will leave readers
on the edge of their seats.
"It's a historical suspense novel," Brooks said. "Character rich and hopefully an exciting
read."
Set in the southern Appalachian Mountains at the turn of the 20th century, "Monteith's Mountains" features
a cast of characters that includes a serial killer.
Possibly as interesting as the novel's plot is the author's path
to becoming a novelist.
"Monteiths Mountains" is Brooks first attempt at writing a novel after spending much of his
life at other pursuits.
Before he came to the South, Brooks spent many years working in the music business in New
York.
"I've been writing all my life," he said. "I used to write songs and arrange music."
In 1970, his music
took him to Gatlinburg, Tenn., where he eventually started a family business.
Brooks left Gatlinburg in 1978 to continue
his education at the University of Mississippi. After graduation, he worked in Media-Operations at Ole Miss, producing and
directing remote sports productions.
He moved to Tuscaloosa in 1986, and now is the Relocation Coordinator at Duckworth-Morris-Garrison
Real Estate.
How Brooks went from the music business to real estate is simple.
"I never found anything I wanted
to do when I grew up," he said. "But I liked trying new things. It keeps you from getting stuck."
Brooks said he missed
the creativity of writing, and when the opportunity to write something he was passionate about presented itself he took it.
He started writing "Monteith's Mountain" in 1995, and the book is expected to be available in mass in October.
But
Brooks said getting "Monteiths Mountains" published was no easy task.
"I collected a lot of good rejections from New
York publishers.
"You have to have a thick skin," he said, jokingly. "I'm a Realtor so I already have that."
Brooks
luck changed when he presented his manuscript to High Country Publishers Ltd. in Boone, N.C.
"I felt what I wrote
was more suitable for a regional publisher," he said. "As a new writer with a first book, I would rather have a lot of support
from a regional publisher rather than be a part of the pack at a big publisher."
Judy Geary, senior editor at High
Country Publishers said the strength of the book's characterization and the fact that the main character "scared her half
to death" is what attracted the publishers.
"He succeeded in getting the reader into the head of this frightening
serial killer and made it believable," she said. "Creating a multi-dimensional character is not easy."
Geary, who
worked directly with Brooks on the book, said another added attraction for the publishers was that so much of the book was
true.
"It is good, quality historical fiction and that is important," she said. "As a small publisher, our books have
to be better than the big guys because they have to sell themselves."
"We are pleased to have Skip as an author, and
we are also pleased we have tied up his next couple of books."
"Monteith's Mountains" is the second book Brooks has
written that is set in the land of his wife's ancestors.
He said the initial search for her roots lead to an unpublished
first manuscript that eventually will be one of three books in a series that spans 100 years in the Appalachians.
However,
Brooks said he hopes "Monteith's Mountains" doesnt stop at the book level, but one day makes it to the big screen.
"It
took a long time to get it this far," he said. "But I would like to get it to a screen writer."
In addition to the
sequel to "Monteith's Mountains," the author is working on a more contemporary, autobiographical book set in Alabama.
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