Plowin' Newground

By Jerry W. Brown

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0970557523
• ISBN13: 9780970557520
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Dry Bayou Pr
• Length: 406 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Interesting story of a person's life

George "Jickie" Jennings is the son of a moonshiner from the Louisiana Bayou. He realizes, early on, that education was his ticket out, so scholarships to Tulane University, then UCLA-Berkeley, lead to him becoming a civilian scientist with the Defense Department. He is called back home when Ersel, his father, is severely injured in an accident. The relationship between the two can best be described as difficult. During the Great Depression, the family survived as best they could. Some money could be made by, for instance, catching crawfish or helping a neighbor in their garden, and selling to one of the local businesses. Ersel was drunk much too often. At Tulane, Jickie falls for a woman named Rachel Goodman, who comes from a very religious family. Her brother, David, the man of the family (their father had died), tells Jickie to end the relationship, now, because he isn't Jewish. David even takes Rachel home to Texas, to prevent them from seeing each other. Jickie marries a local girl, but she later dies of cancer. In the early 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement comes to town, in the form of three young people helping the local blacks to register and vote. An attampt by the local Ku Klux Klan to encourage the three to immediately leave turns tragic. Back to the present, actually the late 1970s, Jickie's bitterness and jadedness comes off as acting like a major jerk. When Ersel wakes up, there is no grand, tearful reunion (the two hadn't spoken to each other in more than 15 years). In fact, they spend most of their time complaining at each other. On the good side, Jickie runs into Rachel, now Ersel's neurosurgeon, and they get back together. As time goes on, the two men spend a lot of time with each other, get a lot of things out in the open, and Jickie begins to start to let go of his pain and bitterness. The reading may seem rather slow, but, by the end, the reader will realize that they have just finished a great novel. Not only is this an interesting story of a person's life, but one can almost hear and smell the bayou while reading it. This is a fine piece of writing.

Plowin' newground

The book is thoroughly enjoyable; I could not put it down. Since at one time, I lived in the area in which the book is set I am well aware of the area and the cultures. My only negative comment is Jickie's sudden attack upon the doctors. The reader is not aware of the discontent so rampant in Jickie and this comes as a surprise. His rage is misplaced; the doctors are not his problem. However, the book was still very interesting.

A recommended account of how people and lives can change

Set in America during the 50's and 70's, Jerry W. Brown's Plowin' Newground is the engagingly written story of George "Jickie" Jennings, a young Louisiana man called home to his estranged father. Jickie decides to use his mind to win a scholarship, to earn a college degree from Tulane, and achieve a better life than what he sees at home on the swampland. In the course of tending to his father's needs arising from a traumatic head injury, and a reunion with a childhood sweetheart who is now an expert neurosurgeon, complicate everything. Plowin' Newground is a deftly drawn dramatic, highly recommended account of how people and lives can change, for good or for ill, and the hope for understanding that lies within us all.

Plowin Newground - A MUST READ FOR 2001

Plowin' New GroundA first time novelist has encompassed all the facets of emotion and intrigue into one book.You can see the beauty of the forest and hear the songs of the birds as he walks you through the Louisiana Bayou country. You experience the heart rendering conflicts and opportunities for learning in familial relationships, grandparents through siblings, AND the changes and challenges that came with integration and acceptance of anyone not Caucasian and Protestant. You rejoice in the enthusiasm and endurance of first love and wrestle with the supreme commitment a later-in- life love demands. Anyone who lived this period of time will appreciate Mr. Brown's writing. Anyone who didn't can live it with us through his superb story telling. This book is a "must read." We have a marvelous new Southern writer in our midst. Five stars for Jerry Wayne Brown.

Plowin' Newground

"Plowin' Newground" by Jerry W. Brown, ISBN 0-9705575-2-3Review At the suggestion of my wife, I have just finished reading "Plowin' Newground", Jerry Brown's new 400 page fictional novel. I found it to be very entertaining and fast moving. I recommend it to persons who are still "plowing new grounds", i.e., coping with new circumstances as we all must. The descriptions of the flora and fauna and sights and sounds of the north Louisiana swamp and hill country, as written by Brown are most realistic. One can almost experience the calls and habits of the whippoorwills and the giant "good-God!" woodpeckers. His word pictures give one the same feelings of being there as do those of the frontier west as penned by the late Louis L'Amour. Brown's characters seem real and are so typical of those of the times and places described. They give one an appreciation of the strengths, failures and achievements of many of us. If five stars are awarded to the best of books, then I think this book merits more than four stars.James T. Ballard