Books with author Sonny Brewer

The magnificent Ghosthead Oak has stood watch over coastal Alabama’s mysterious backwater bays and slow-running rivers, where bull alligators rumble the nerves of lesser creatures and every living thing has the capacity to kill, for five hundred years. Some say the fabled giant tree was once a knee-high seedling brushed by the black boot of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez. No other tree along the entire coastal crescent from New Orleans to Apalachicola can rival its majesty or its power to draw people to it.In silence and with dignity, the Ghosthead has served as sentinel to the widow’s family land for countless generations. It was a childhood friend and a spirit guide in troubled times. Her father is buried in its shade. So why would the widow walk into a biker bar and hire a man to fire up his chainsaw and inflict fatal gashes around its trunk, ending in a few minutes what took five centuries to create?The Widow and the Tree is a tale of dark deeds committed with mercy in mind, provoking the reader to ask: Would I have done the same thing? This book is based on a true story.

Cormac—a dark-red Golden Retriever who has always been afraid of thunderstorms and lightning flashes—runs away one stormy night while his master is away. So begins a strange adventure that lands Cormac in the back of a red pickup truck driven by a mysterious woman, takes him to a series of dog pounds and rescue shelters, and ultimately brings him to the suburbs of Connecticut.Meanwhile, his owner, devastated and trying to juggle his family and his new novel, becomes determined to solve the “dog-napping” case, watching his small-town community come together in search of his lost companion.Inspired by real events, Brewer has, as he says, “mainly told the truth in this story of losing my good dog Cormac.”Sonny Brewer is the author of the novels The Poet of Tolstoy Park and A Sound Like Thunder and the editor of the Blue Moon Café Southern fiction series. He founded Over the Transom Bookstore in Fairhope, Alabama, where he lives with his family.

This collection of thirty Southern writers gathers some of the finest authors in the country—with stories, essays, and a poem. Demonstrating a range of styles, topics, and themes, these stories display each writer's craftsmanship and talent and together form a testament to the grand literary tradition of the South. Contributing authors are: Marlin Barton Rick Bragg Jill Connor Brown C. Terry Cline, Jr. Pat Conroy Tom Corcoran Beth Ann Fennelly Patricia Foster Tom Franklin William Gay Jim Gilbert W.E.B. Griffin Winston Groom Melinda Haynes Frank Turner Hollon Silas House Suzanne Hudson Douglas Kelley Tom Kelly Barbara Robinette Moss Michael Knight Bev Marshall Jennifer Paddock Judith Richards Richard Shackelford George Singleton Monroe Thompson Sidney Thompson Brad Watson Steve Yarbrough

The magnificent Ghosthead Oak has stood watch over coastal Alabama’s mysterious backwater bays and slow-running rivers, where bull alligators rumble the nerves of lesser creatures and every living thing has the capacity to kill, for five hundred years. Some say the fabled giant tree was once a knee-high seedling brushed by the black boot of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez. No other tree along the entire coastal crescent from New Orleans to Apalachicola can rival its majesty or its power to draw people to it.In silence and with dignity, the Ghosthead has served as sentinel to the widow’s family land for countless generations. It was a childhood friend and a spirit guide in troubled times. Her father is buried in its shade. So why would the widow walk into a biker bar and hire a man to fire his chainsaw and inflict fatal gashes around its trunk, ending in a few minutes what took five centuries to create?The Widow and the Tree is a tale of dark deeds committed with mercy in mind, provoking the reader to ask: Would I have done the same thing? This book is based on a true story.

In the same vein as Marley and Me and My Dog Skip, this “mostly true” novel is at once a whimsical campfire mystery and a universal story about the friendship between a man and his dog.Cormac, a golden retriever who has always been afraid of thunderstorms and lightning flashes, runs away one stormy night while his master is away. So begins a strange adventure that lands Cormac in the back of a red pickup truck driven by a mysterious woman, takes him to a series of dog pounds and rescue shelters, and ultimately brings him to the suburbs of Connecticut. His owner, meanwhile, devastated by Cormac’s disappearance and trying to juggle a family, a book tour, and writing his new novel, becomes determined to solve the “dog-napping” case. With the help of the local veterinarian, bookstore colleagues, animal rescue employees, and old friends, he picks up on Cormac’s trail and watches his small-town community come together in search of his lost companion.Inspired by real events, and embellished only to serve the story through the spirit of imagination, Brewer has, as he says, “mainly told the truth in this story of losing my good dog Cormac.”From the Hardcover edition.

Cormac is a novel based on real events, and tells the tale of a Golden Retriever, who ran away from his Alabama home while the owner was on a book tour in San Francisco. Cormac had always been afraid of storms, they made him cower and tremble. Or, in this case, run, run like the shrieking wind that blew the rain across the land. Maybe if Cormac s master had not been away from home, and his food and water poured for him by a stranger s hand, things would have been different. But on that day the young male dog took off into an adventure that would land him in the bed of a red pickup truck, driven by a mysterious woman who would hand him over to the dog pound, and the dog pound would hand him over to a rescue group who would take him to a clinic to be fixed by a routine scalpel and end his royal lineage. Cormac would be hauled to Connecticut in the back of a van, and turned over to another rescue group that would offer him for adoption on the internet. These things are known because Cormac s owner, Sonny Brewer, the author of this book, went door to door in his neighborhood gathering one clue and then another, one bit of information and then another. When the trail led him to the dog pound and the director there refused to disclose information to Sonny, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist friend promised the story would make national news in 48 hours unless Sonny was told everything he wanted to know. Doors and phone lines then opened and Sonny attempted to determine if the Golden Retriever the foster family called Cognac was in fact Cormac. Sonny felt 90 percent certain it was his dog and agreed to take him, paying a pet transport driver $300 to bring the Golden south to Alabama