Don't Forget Me, Bro! by John Michael Cummings Spotlight!

DON’T FORGET ME, BRO deals with themes of childhood abuse, mental
illness, and alienated families. The book opens with the main
character, forty-two-year-old Mark Barr, who has returned home from New
York to West Virginia after eleven years for his older brother Steve’s
funeral. Steve, having died of a heart attack at forty-five, was
mentally ill most of his adult life, though Mark has always questioned
what was "mentally ill" and what was the result of their father’s
verbal and physical abuse during their childhood.

The book unfolds into an odyssey for Mark to discover love for his
brother posthumously in a loveless family.

DON’T FORGET ME, BRO is a portrait of an oldest brother’s supposed
mental illness and unfulfilled life, as well as a redeeming tale of a
youngest brother’s alienation from his family and his guilt for
abandoning them.


Advance review by Bookreporter.com

DON’T FORGET ME, BRO

By John Michael Cummings

Stephen F. Austin State University Press


Families: they love us, they hate us, they confuse us, they support us,
they believe in us, they hurt us, they forgive us, they never forget
our mistakes …

It’s no good picking and choosing which of the above (in what could be
an interminably long list) best applies to your particular family, or
mine, because today’s assumption will become tomorrow’s irrelevance.

As author John Michael Cummings shows with such poignant and searing
skill in DON’T FORGET ME, BRO families contain all of it. There’s
simply no tidy, predictable emotional or dynamic boundary to draw
around these most primal of human units. Even those who don’t know
their biological families have collective relationships that daily test
their autonomy, individuality, self-worth and dreams.

Cummings, who’s spent more than three decades writing about human
beings, mainly of the everyday American persuasion, excels in
uncovering those beneath-the-skin familial stories that realistically
probe uncomfortable, often invisible, areas of life. And even in our
current decade of sociological transparency, perhaps nothing is more
resistant to illumination in this context than mental illness.

As a broad collection of chemical, biological and/or psychiatric
disorders of the brain, it eludes clear-cut treatments and solutions as
successfully as families elude pat definitions of who and what they
are. When families and their perceptions of mental illness collide, as
happens with such gritty persistence in DON’T FORGET ME, BRO all the
discomfort of relationships, normal and otherwise, comes to the fore.

Returning home to West Virginia to deal with the premature death of his
older brother Steve, long diagnosed as schizophrenic, Mark Barr carries
plenty of his own emotional and psychological baggage, including a
deep-seated distaste for a father he remembers as abusive, a mother who
seems a passive bystander to life, and a middle brother who comes
across as just plain weird. With a number of failed relationships on
record – including the one that’s falling apart even as he sets out
from New York – he’s not so sure about his own mental health either.

“Going back home” stories are often based on narrow cliché-filled
themes that focus on a single character or experience. Like series TV
shows, they are easier to control and wrap up in a satisfying
sentimental or tragic package at the end.

Fortunately, DON’T FORGET ME, BRO isn’t one of them. It’s a gripping
emotional and literary journey that hits just about every pothole one
can expect to find on life’s road; that part is engaging and sometimes
oddly familiar. And when Cummings throws in a few unexpected left
turns, thanks to his character’s unpredictable relatives and
colleagues, there are moments of surprise and difference to ponder as
well. That skilfully managed dichotomy in itself sets this author
apart, drawing the reader into places that challenge assumption and
attitude.

At the outset, Mark does think this back-home story is all about him,
but he’s not driven by ego or self-absorption as much as by fear, worry
and chronic indecision.  His own identity, perhaps even his future, are
on the line.

But as he blunders into memories, people, and artifacts from the
chaotic mosaic of his dead brother’s life he rediscovers who Steve
really was. In spite of himself he grows into a kind of belated and
bewildered stewardship over his brother’s cremated remains, which
become a catalyst for revealing ever-deeper layers of family stories he
never really knew.

Haunted by the last words he heard Steve utter – “Don’t forget me, bro”
– Mark realizes that at the heart of every human existence is the fear
of being forgotten, of simply disappearing into cosmic anonymity. After
all, even families that can’t stand each other tenaciously remember
their own.

With the unexpected complicity of his equally dysfunctional remaining
brother, Mark hangs around his hometown, stumbling upon ways to build
better memories than the ones he’d fled more than a decade earlier when
he went to New York seeking success.

The Barr family changes a little, just enough for its surviving members
to actually remain civilly in the same room together. That’s about it.
Cummings doesn’t make their story television-comfortable, nor does he
eliminate the heavy reality of an uncertain future.

Set against the larger contexts of contemporary economic depression,
social despair, fear of the known and unknown, as well as multiple
shades of guilt, remorse and anger, in the end DON’T FORGET ME, BRO can
only exhale in a long sigh of acceptance.

Cummings adeptly leaves the reader suspended in that fragile moment
before the next breath must be taken, yet strangely satisfied that
compassion and justice have been attained. DON’T FORGET ME, BRO is a
rare thing, a brilliant addition to a theme in which so many other
novels under-achieve.

– reviewed by Pauline Finch, Bookreporter.com


Praise for DON’T FORGET ME, BRO (978-1-62288-078-2)

Author blurbs:

“John Michael Cummings’s portrait of a West Virginia family gone awry
brings us into a world of dysfunction, doubt, and suspense, one which
is as harrowing as it is familiar.  In spare, precise prose Don’t
Forget Me, Bro charts the Barr family’s difficult history, revealing an
emotional terrain which has been strip-mined by an abuse,
schizophrenia, and premature death.  When Mark Barr returns home, he
encounters enough ghosts from his past to cause him to question his own
stability.  This is a novel that is as powerful as it is true,
rewarding the reader with a rare, illuminating wisdom.”

—John Smolens, author of nine works of fiction, including The
Anarchist, The Schoolmaster’s Daughter, and Quarantine


"This ingenious novel is about family--the idea of family, and the
gritty day-to-day of it.  It allows you to feel a family's anger and
fear, and watch their battle with--and triumph over--mental illness.  A
tense and gripping read that adds up to something profound.”

--Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng and Half a Life: A Memoir


“The mosaic of moving tectonic plates that comprise the Barr family
rupture when Mark returns home after 11 years in New York City to
attend his older brother’s funeral.  Nothing makes sense—his family is
big time dysfunctional with a history of lying, childhood abuse, mental
illness, and secrets.  Not to mention, his wife Lisa keeps calling his
cell trying to dump him.  Local color and details are hardwired into
Cummings’ DNA, but what’s really electrifying are Whitey, the town’s
eccentric, and Sherry May, his dead brother’s intellectually challenged
girlfriend. The ghosts of West Virginia past haunt this novel as they
do the work of Pinckney Benedict and Breece D’J Pancake. Cummings is in
excellent company.”

—Richard Peabody, editor Gargoyle Magazine


"Don't Forget Me, Bro by John Michael Cummings is a very well-written
slice of life novel about a dysfunctional family in present day West
Virginia. It's also the story of three brothers who have escaped their
upbringing in different ways. The narrator, Mark, is the one who has
left the coal mining hills forever, or so he thinks. After a decade of
living in New York, he finally makes that dreaded trip back home for
brother Steve's funeral, and is immediately flooded with depressing
memories and reminders of why he left. Cummings is quite skillful at
showing (instead of telling) his story through details of daily life
and the interactions of his characters. Toward the end, when the
father, mother and two surviving brothers come together briefly to
honor Steve's memory, you get a glimpse of what this family could have
been. Only Mark seems to grow as a character, by facing his own demons
for the first time. If you like realistic fiction, this is your book.”

—Ruth White, author of Belle Prater's Boy and Mansions of Karma.


"Cummings situates the changing West Virginia landscape against the
changeless human heart and comes up with a fresh reminder that
constants like love, decency, and respect between a father and his sons
can’t be replaced by Wal-Marts and Home Depots taking over
West-by-God-Virginia, but these constants remain as deep in men as coal
in the earth.  The writing is taut, the story compelling.”

-Paul Ruffin, Author and Director of Texas Review Press


“As a book reviewer, I'm always on the lookout for outstanding writers.
John Michael Cummings, born in 1963 in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, is
one of the finest I've encountered. His latest novel, "Don't Forget Me,
Bro" is a prime example of the wonderful storytelling that seems to be
part of the DNA of West Virginians. In this novel, Mark Barr, a writer,
leaves his apartment in Brooklyn to return to West Virginia for the
funeral of his troubled brother, Steve. Mark is well aware of another
writer from below the Mason-Dixon Line, Thomas Wolfe, and his novel
"You Can't Go Home Again." But Mark feels he has to honor the last
words he heard from Steve: "Don't Forget Me, Bro." The novel shows the
brilliance I discovered reading his short story collection, "Ugly to
Start With" and his novel "The Night I Freed John Brown."

—David M. Kinchen, Book Reviewer for www.huntingtonnews.net, with
reviews on Amazon.com and Goodreads


“DON’T FORGET ME, BRO is a tour-de-force of gritty realism.  Rich in
characterization and lyrically written, John Cummings has painted a
heart-felt portrait of dysfunction and inner discovery.  The complex
and utterly compelling tapestry revolves around mental illness, but
DON’T FORGET ME, BRO is that rare book—for the general, educated
reader.  Bravo, bravo.”

--Nathan Leslie, author of Sibs and The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice


“The tragedy that besets the characters in John Michael Cummings’ novel
Don't Forget Me, Bro is magnified by the narrowness of their lives and
the barriers that have existed for decades between them. Faced with the
task of addressing the death of a troubled son and brother, members of
the Barr family fight, deceive, and negotiate with one another,
ultimately revealing themselves to each other as they grapple with the
greater issues of fractured history and broken dreams. And yet, in a
plain-spoken style that often reaches us in a voice much like the hard
truth of memoir, Don’t Forget Me, Bro uncovers the extraordinary
emotional dynamics at play in this memorable family.”

—David Sanders, editor, Poetry News in Review


“The new novel from John Michael Cummings, Don't Forget Me, Bro, evokes
the strong sense of place characteristic of the best Southern
literature. His protagonist, Mark Barr, learns that you can go home
again, but he finds the journey fraught with a legacy of childhood
abuse, mental illness, and scars that never go away.”

--Tom Young, author of The Mullah's Storm, Sand and Fire, and other
novels