Morgantown native William Brewer spins a colorful tale of healing in his debut novel.
Some stories are forms of escape, worlds we can sink into and disappear for a while—grandiose tales that sweep us away from ourselves, our troubles, and our fears. Others dive deeper to reveal truths so honest, so universal, that the mirror it presents to us is too real to look away from.
In William Brewer’s upcoming novel, The Red Arrow, the narrator’s battle with mental health is spilled across the pages in long, rolling sentences punctuated by short interjections of brutal truth that exemplify what it means to struggle and not know how to fix it. Cleverly written as if it were nonfiction, the book builds a rapport between the narrator and the reader, making what’s presented feel all the more real.
Exploring painful realities with a dark-humored twist on something lighter, Brewer weaves a timeline as disjointed and varied as a person’s struggle to understand and care for his own mental health, in healing’s non-linear way. Physics and psychedelics and train rides through Italy and just trying to figure out what we’re all doing in life create an image of the human experience through the perception of a struggling writer trying to keep his head—and pen—above water.
A familiar figure for many, “The Mist” lies on the very edges of the novel, lurking and waiting on its moment to engulf whole pages—whole sections. Brewer’s stunningly simple personification of The Mist makes it a character—sometimes a memory of one—that haunts the narrator in his movements forward, popping up like an unwanted guest that is too entwined with one’s life and home to evict completely—a being we all have had at our heels, shaped uniquely for us.
But with the path of healing as curvy and mountainous as an Appalachian backroad, Brewer captures the ups just as well as the downs. During an experimental psychedelic therapy treatment with psilocybin mushrooms, the narrator is ripped apart and pieced back together in bursts of color, The Mist wiped away. In this once-occupied space sits connection: to home, to love, to his own mind. Brewer lays out the joy one feels when sadness becomes only fleeting moments and a word no longer carries the burden it once did.
The Red Arrow by William Brewer hits shelves May 17, 2022, and is currently available for pre-order.
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