Stunned by the death of his mentally ill brother, forty-two-year-old Mark Barr returns to his hometown in West Virginia for his brother’s funeral only to find out that his estranged family has no such plans. Once back home, he discovers that his family’s memory, as well as his own, of his brother as a broken, hopeless schizophrenic is belied by mounting evidence that Steve Barr had lived a much … much fuller and more complicated life.
Armed with this new knowledge, Mark tears off on a mission to honor his brother’s memory with justice and compassion. As he fights to change the hearts of his father, mother, and middle brother, all of whom are fractured by anger, blame, and dysfunction, his own stability is rocked apart.
In tough, spare, beautiful language that pulls the reader into the peeling, gothic world of southern West Virginia, Don’t Forget Me, Bro shows us that at the heart of every human existence is the ultimate fear of being forgotten, of simply being gone.
more
Don’t Forget Me Bro begs the reader to ask the question, why are our embedded memories so often stronger of the bad, the painful, and the ugly? Why is it so much harder to recall the amusing, happy moments of our lives? Thomas Wolf wrote, “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile…back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time—back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”
In this heartrending, flawless novel, forty-two-year-old Mark Barr does just that when he goes home to his small town in West Virginia to face a family, he has not seen in eleven years. A family he’s been running from his entire life, but never outrun.
His brother Steve, a diagnosed schizophrenic, and sadly, possibly a misdiagnosed schizophrenic, has died, and Mark believes he is going home to bury him. The three Barr sons, who held so much promise, were all damaged in different ways by an abusive father and a powerless mother. Mark, has managed to battle his demons to a standstill, but never entirely won the war and is haunted by his childhood. With Steve’s death, the memories come alive, and Mark must come to terms with them. Child abuse has a lasting impact, and in a final act of abuse, the father has decided to cremate Steve rather than bury him in the family plot. Marc is ravaged by guilt and outrage at this final act of alienation and disrespect to his brother. After all, Steve’s last request to Mark was for him to make sure that he’s buried next to their grandfather and, please, don’t forget me, Bro. But, who was Steve? Mark’s journey will take him on a quest to discover who his flesh and blood brother really was, and in so doing, maybe discover who he is.
Don’t Forget Me, Bro examines the dynamics of family, child abusive, mental illness, and the permanent imprint of a childhood without love. It is also a story about one man’s journey to discover the roots of his discontent. As gritty and down to earth as Cummings dialogue in this book is, that is just how lyrical, poetic, pure, and gorgeous Cummings prose is. At every turn, he dares the reader to listen and dig deeper into their own hearts. His self-examination and examination of each member of the Barr clan are so richly characterized that I found myself lost in his words and just staring at the page and saying to myself, wow.
I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s a rare treat to read an author who delivers such exquisite prose and delivers such an inspiring tale.