Named one of the Top 25 Best Novels of 2017 by Paste Magazine!
“The most exciting literary adventure fiction I've read since Deliverance.” –Howard Frank Mosher, author of God's Kingdom
In The River of Kings, bestselling author of Fallen Land Taylor Brown artfully weaves three narrative strands—two brothers’ journey down an ancient river, their father’s tangled past, and the buried history of the river’s earliest people—to evoke a legendary place and its powerful hold on the human imagination.
The Altamaha River, Georgia’s “Little Amazon,” is one of the last truly wild places in America. Crossed by roads only five times in its 137 miles, the black-water river is home to thousand-year-old virgin cypress, direct descendants of eighteenth-century Highland warriors, and a staggering array of rare and endangered species. The Altamaha is even rumored to harbor its own river monster, as well as traces of the oldest European fort in North America.
Brothers Hunter and Lawton Loggins set off to kayak the river, bearing their father’s ashes toward the sea. Hunter is a college student, Lawton a Navy SEAL on leave; they were raised by an angry, enigmatic shrimper who loved the river, and whose death remains a mystery that his sons are determined to solve. As the brothers proceed downriver, their story alternates with that of Jacques le Moyne, the first European artist in North America, who accompanied a 1564 French expedition that began as a search for riches and ended in a bloody confrontation with Spanish conquistadors and native tribes.
Twining past and present in one compelling narrative, and illustrated with drawings that survived the 1564 expedition, The River of Kings is Taylor Brown’s second novel: a dramatic and rewarding adventure through history, myth, and the shadows of family secrets.
Genre: Historical
“The most exciting literary adventure fiction I've read since Deliverance.” –Howard Frank Mosher, author of God's Kingdom
In The River of Kings, bestselling author of Fallen Land Taylor Brown artfully weaves three narrative strands—two brothers’ journey down an ancient river, their father’s tangled past, and the buried history of the river’s earliest people—to evoke a legendary place and its powerful hold on the human imagination.
The Altamaha River, Georgia’s “Little Amazon,” is one of the last truly wild places in America. Crossed by roads only five times in its 137 miles, the black-water river is home to thousand-year-old virgin cypress, direct descendants of eighteenth-century Highland warriors, and a staggering array of rare and endangered species. The Altamaha is even rumored to harbor its own river monster, as well as traces of the oldest European fort in North America.
Brothers Hunter and Lawton Loggins set off to kayak the river, bearing their father’s ashes toward the sea. Hunter is a college student, Lawton a Navy SEAL on leave; they were raised by an angry, enigmatic shrimper who loved the river, and whose death remains a mystery that his sons are determined to solve. As the brothers proceed downriver, their story alternates with that of Jacques le Moyne, the first European artist in North America, who accompanied a 1564 French expedition that began as a search for riches and ended in a bloody confrontation with Spanish conquistadors and native tribes.
Twining past and present in one compelling narrative, and illustrated with drawings that survived the 1564 expedition, The River of Kings is Taylor Brown’s second novel: a dramatic and rewarding adventure through history, myth, and the shadows of family secrets.
Genre: Historical
Praise for this book
"With language as rich as floodplain soil, The River of Kings is a stunning Southern epic of tremendous heart and scope. Taylor Brown takes risks few other writers would chance and somehow manages to traverse those waters with an astounding grace and beauty." - David Joy
"The most exciting literary adventure fiction I've read since Deliverance." - Howard Frank Mosher
"Like a great body of water itself, The River of Kings is one moment grace and serenity, and the next moment hazard and threat, shifting in wonderfully unexpected ways, yet always in possession of a natural beauty you cannot help but admire." - Michael Farris Smith
"In The River of Kings Taylor Brown offers a brilliant braided history, water-tight and blood-bound. Each strand of time is laid atop the one before it to make an intricate fable: two brothers, paddling back against the past, and whatever monsters lurk beneath its surface. This book haunts itself. And Mr. Brown keeps getting better and better." - Ashley Warlick
"If your curiosity is piqued by an exciting river adventure with rich character study and language that fairly leaps off the page, look no further you've found your book." - Andria Williams
"The most exciting literary adventure fiction I've read since Deliverance." - Howard Frank Mosher
"Like a great body of water itself, The River of Kings is one moment grace and serenity, and the next moment hazard and threat, shifting in wonderfully unexpected ways, yet always in possession of a natural beauty you cannot help but admire." - Michael Farris Smith
"In The River of Kings Taylor Brown offers a brilliant braided history, water-tight and blood-bound. Each strand of time is laid atop the one before it to make an intricate fable: two brothers, paddling back against the past, and whatever monsters lurk beneath its surface. This book haunts itself. And Mr. Brown keeps getting better and better." - Ashley Warlick
"If your curiosity is piqued by an exciting river adventure with rich character study and language that fairly leaps off the page, look no further you've found your book." - Andria Williams
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