Description
Book SynopsisRedemption: The Two Lives of Harry Brooks is a work of historical fiction based on the life of Brooks Eason’s grandfather.
In the first half of Harry’s life, he embezzled money from the Uniontown, PA, school district where he was the elected superintendent, left his wife for another woman, and sought to escape by booking passage on a Cunard liner to Liverpool. But his plan was foiled, Scotland Yard arrested him when the ship docked, and he was extradited, tried, convicted, and served three years in Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh. In the second half of Harry’s life, he came to the South, where he spent his last thirty-five years as a revered and successful Methodist minister and church official. He was a district superintendent overseeing a hundred congregations at the time of his death in 1942. In 1934, when President Roosevelt spoke to a crowd of 75,000 in North Mississippi, Harry was chosen to give the invocation. Nobody in the huge crown knew the preacher at the lectern was an ex-con.
Redemption: The Two Lives of Harry Brooks entertains readers with a fascinating story and uses Harry’s life to illustrate important principles of theology, principally that all men are sinners but that even the worst of sinners are capable of redemption. It is unique and appealing because it’s based on a true story of a man who could have given up when he lost everything, but instead he persevered.
Redemption: The Two Lives of Harry Brooks appeals to audiences who are interested in an inspiring story of overcoming hardship.
Trade Review"One man, two lives. The first Harry Brooks was a deeply flawed man: an embezzler, an adulterer, a husband who walked away from his first wife and children and served time in the state penitentiary after becoming a fugitive from justice. The second: a revered minister in the Methodist Church, a man of God who led his congregation and others out of a major disaster, a civic leader who welcomed President Roosevelt to his hometown, a respected family man who took care of his second wife and children. In this sensitive, well written biography/novel, Brooks Eason—grandson of the Janus-faced Harry Brooks--weaves these two strikingly different men into one human fabric: the flawed and the revered, the sinner and the redeemed. If you ever doubt that people can change for the better and leave the past behind, read Redemption: The Two Lives of Harry Brooks!"
- Minrose Gwin, author of Promise and The Accidentals
