Title: Plowin' Newground

Author: Jerry W. Brown

 ISBN: 0970557523 

The following review was contributed by: Paul Lappen & CLICK TO VIEW Paul Lappen's Reviews

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 paina nd 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.





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