Don't Forget Me, Bro

by John Michael Cummings

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 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.  

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2015

About the author

I'm the author of three novels, two novellas, and more than one hundred short stories. My debut novel, The Night I Freed John Brown (Penguin Group, 2008), won The Paterson Prize for Books for Young People and was selected for Black History Month by USA Today. Ugly To Start With (West Virginia University Press, 2011) was a finalist in the Foreword INDIES Book of Year Award. Don't Forget Me, Bro (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016) was widely excerpted in the Chicago Tribune. My nonfiction has been published by New York Daily News, The Providence Journal, and The Newark Star-Ledger. My short stories have appeared in Kenyon Review, North American Review, and The Iowa Review. I was a finalist in the Miami University Novella Contest, a semi-finalist in the Winnow Press 2004 First Book Award for Fiction, was twice-nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and received an Honorable Mention in The Best American Short Stories series. I taught English at Seminole State College of Florida and wrote business news for the Fairfax Times and alternative news for the Utne Reader. I hold a BA in studio arts and graphic design from George Mason University and an MFA in creative writing from University of Central Florida.

My short story collection The Spirit in My Shoes is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press/University of Wisconsin (November 2023). To pre-order directly from the press, email: cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the YA writer’s first novel for adults, a middle-aged man returns to his small West Virginia town after a decade to attend a funeral – and face family legacies of abuse and schizophrenia. The story stands out for its memorable first-person narration and suburban wasteland setting. Cummings includes serious commentary on the country’s homogenization; passing chain stores, Mark thinks, “I could be anywhere in America.” This family-sensitive portrayal of mental illness should resonate with fans of The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer.

(See my full review at Foreword.)

[John Michael Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading like a memoir, Don't Forget Me, Bro is often painful, and forces the reader question what is fact and what is simply perception, reputation, and expectation. At the end, we are left with many of the same questions which plague Mark: What happens to the dead? What is the nature mental illness? The effect of family brutality? Can one, after over a decade away, truly ever return home? And most haunting: ‘Was I dwelling on the past? Was I robbing my present?’ A page-turner.

—Raquel Thorne, Cahoodaloodaling

[Ruth White · Rating 5 out of 5]

“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.

[Belle Ami · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Gretchen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The death of a son and brother brings a fractured family together in this powerful and thought-provoking book. Mark Barr, the youngest of three sons, returns to his childhood home in West Virginia to attend the funeral of his oldest brother, Steve, who suffered from schizophrenia. The book is written entirely in first person from Mark’s perspective as the prodigal son who is now a New Yorker. The night before Steve succumbed to his untimely death due to a defect in his aortic valve, Mark reluctantly spoke to Steve and it was then that Steve prophetically expressed the desire to be buried next to his Granddad.
During his stay in West Virginia, an indignant Mark discovers that his parents decided to have Steve cremated. The ensuing battle over Steve’s remains finds Mark and his brother Greg in an awkward and unlikely truce to do right by Steve regardless of their parents’ demands. During the many conversations and altercations that Mark had with his father, it was quite apparent that the relationship he had with his sons was and continued to be very strained. The father was a sarcastic, unfeeling bully who regularly hit his young sons and belittled them whenever he could. Mark’s introspection about his own failings as a man and his relationship difficulties with women directly related to his failed relationship with his father. He also placed the blame on his father for causing Steve’s schizophrenia. During several of their verbal battles, it seemed to me that Mark goaded his father in order to start a fight. In my opinion, Mark did this in order to prove his manhood to a father who viewed him as a failure and a mama’s boy.
While visiting with Whitey, a former neighbor, Mark was given a box of photographs of Steve which were taken by Whitey. Whitey, an aging homosexual who, unbeknownst to Mark, maintained a friendship with Steve even during his worst bouts with mental illness. The photographs showed Steve in all sorts of peculiar settings in various outlandish attire. The photos, initially a source of embarrassment for Mark, eventually became important glimpses into Steve’s life as he and his mother pored over them with a magnifying glass, desperate to gain any insight into Steve’s solitary world. Mark also learned that Steve had a girlfriend, an intellectually disabled young woman. While questioning his brother’s seemingly peculiar choice for a girlfriend, Mark takes the time to get to know her in an attempt to reacquaint himself with Steve. Her memories of Steve helped Mark to see him as more than just a crazy overweight embarrassment, but a man capable of loving and caring who still enjoyed painting and giving trinkets to his girl. The fact that Steve had chosen her to be his companion was a reflection of just how deep in denial Mark was about Steve’s illness. In his mind, Steve was still the track star with a bright future, not a severely mentally ill man.
The middle brother Greg was an interesting character. Like Steve, he was very intelligent and once had a bright future ahead of him. Greg was a maintenance man, a career choice that confused Mark, as Greg always had big ambitions to attend college and have a professional career. It was unclear to me why Greg did not pursue a “better” life, but alcoholism certainly factored into that. The brother’s relationship was strained by Mark’s desertion of the family and Greg’s resentment. Mark; however, relied on Greg to fill him in on Steve’s life. Greg takes Mark to Steve’s apartment and breaks into it so Greg could help Mark understand what Steve’s life was like during his darkest days as a schizophrenic. It was during the apartment break-in that Mark confesses to Greg that he also suffers from mental illness.
Meanwhile, Mark’s mission to have Steve’s ashes scattered directly conflicted with his parents’ wishes for a simple cremation and storing the ashes in an unembellished urn. I often felt that the parents’ struggle with Steve and his illness was downplayed and that Mark, having been gone so long, was desperately trying assuage his own guilt and posthumously show Steve that he did care about him.
Eventually, Greg forges his father’s signature, takes the urn for Steve’s ashes and has it engraved with his name and birth-death dates. The family reluctantly agrees that Steve’s ashes, along with select photographs and memorabilia would adorn the mantle, which Greg and Mark would repair as a final statement of support for their brother and mother.
This story of abuse, mental illness and dysfunction was weighty reading material. I felt that the characters were very well-developed and believable. I wouldn’t say any of them were particularly likeable, but the long-suffering mother who desperately desired family harmony and peace was the most relatable to me.
I could almost feel Mark’s anger rising to the surface and as he and Greg fought. Years of unspoken family secrets and dysfunctional dynamics played out in fistfights and insults while nothing really seemed to get resolved. The story was just starting to come together for me when it ended on a relatively high note. For once, the remaining family unit was actually communicating in an attempt to come to a compromise. The fact that Steve’s ashes were put on the mantle along with pictures and books was such a triumphant ending to so much conflict that I wanted the family to seek counseling and come to an understanding about their past and move forward. This is not a criticism of the book, merely a personal observation. I especially wanted that for Mark, who seemed so lost and scattered. There was a brief mention of a homosexual liaison that Mark had in the past, but I could not determine if it was an abusive situation or one that Mark sought out as a young adult due to his desire for a “father figure,” which Mark mentioned during his introspection about his failed relationships with women. I wanted to know more about that.
The author did a very good job of describing the West Virginia scenery and lifestyle of the people in Appalachia. As someone who has been in that part of the country often, I was pleasantly surprised at the accuracy and attention to detail.
One minor criticism that I have is that the author overused the adjective “bluish”, which was slightly irritating. I also saw a few spelling and grammatical errors, which I hope are corrected before publication. After reading Don’t Forget Me, Bro, I feel that I know the Barr family. They could be any family anywhere or your next door neighbors. As difficult as it was to read, it is my opinion that it is an important read. Mental illness, abuse and dysfunction are topics that affect many of us and are often hard to talk about. A book like this one could be a great conversation starter for many families. I would definitely recommend this book.
--reviewed by Gretchen VanOstrand, Ray’s Road Review

[September · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t Forget Me, Bro is a haunting and emotionally rigorous literary novel that examines grief, memory, and the devastating consequences of misunderstanding mental illness. John Michael Cummings delivers a spare yet deeply evocative narrative that pulls readers into the fractured inner world of a family unable or unwilling to confront the truth of one of its own.

Following the death of his brother Steve, forty two year old Mark Barr returns to his West Virginia hometown expecting closure and ritual, only to encounter denial and erasure. As Mark uncovers evidence that Steve’s life was far richer and more complex than the family’s narrative of him as a hopeless schizophrenic, the novel becomes a quiet reckoning with guilt, shame, and neglect. Cummings resists easy sentimentality, allowing the emotional weight to build through revelation rather than exposition.

The novel’s greatest strength lies in its restraint. Cummings’ prose is lean, precise, and deeply atmospheric, capturing the decaying, gothic landscape of southern West Virginia as both setting and metaphor. As Mark struggles to honor his brother’s memory and challenge his family’s long held assumptions, his own emotional stability begins to fracture, mirroring the dysfunction he is trying to repair.

Don’t Forget Me, Bro is a powerful meditation on remembrance and human dignity. It confronts the fear of being forgotten with honesty and compassion, offering a moving exploration of how families survive loss and how they fail one another. Readers who appreciate literary fiction grounded in emotional truth and moral complexity will find this novel both unsettling and unforgettable.

[Alison DeLuca · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last words Steve Barr ever said to his brother Mark were, “Don’t forget me, bro.” When Steve passes away (perhaps from complications from his schizophrenia or a complex reaction to his prescribed drug cocktail) Mark insists on driving back to West Virginia to visit his spiky, damaged, unloving family and try to fulfill Steve’s last request.
What follows in the novel, titled after Steve's last wish (due out this October) is a journey into the heart of starkness, an odyssey of within and without. Leaving Brooklyn and returning to his family’s broken home – in every sense of the word – makes Mark confront memories that are unbelievably bad and, along the way, golden as well.
John Michael Cummings details this journey without a trace of Lifetime-movie proselytizing or Hallmark card sweetness. Each character is real, alive, vibrant in their sodden acceptance of the ugly nature of living and being human. Only Sherry Mayer, the mentally-challenged girl Steve called his girlfriend, sees life as colorful and wonderful, a view reflected in her pink, sparkly sweatshirts and the way she eats fries - by throwing them in the air and catching them in her mouth.
The lovely language of Mark’s journey, both inner and physical, seduced me completely. It’s tough and spare, but beautiful at the same time. Look at this description of Steve, the deceased brother:
“Steve was that guy on “COPS”—no teeth, no shoes, no shirt, hairy white beer belly hanging down over his dirty jeans, screaming and hollering in the street for Momma or Loretta Lou, only to whimper as the cops walked him like a child to the backdoor of the squad car. On that last visit home eleven years ago, I had thought—he’s dead already.”
Greg, Mark’s second brother, is evoked through an odd little story:
“God, he was still strange. Back in junior high, he once ate a whole lemon—bit right into the bright-yellow rind, then proceeded to chew it up and swallow it down in half a dozen face-wrenching bites, just to impress some girl who, as it turned out, wasn’t even watching. Instead, he impressed half the guys in school. They looked at him, at first amazed, then a little weirded out.”
And there are tiny details that catch the readers by our throats, pulling us further into this peeling, gothic world: a Snoopy figurine, with ‘angry, inverted-apostrophe eyes’. I was transfixed by the simple horror of ‘Overhead sagging power lines, black snakes frying on the sky.’ In fact, snakes appear throughout the book, most frighteningly as a metaphor for the wires Steve and Mark’s father attached to Steve’s mattress designed as homespun electro-therapy for when the boy wet the bed.
Yes, Cummings isn’t holding back in this book. Such dark visions take great courage to write, and I was lulled and horrified by those dreams.
Throughout the novel there is a struggle over burial versus cremation. Mark is entirely against turning his brother to ashes, since Steve requested a corner of the churchyard near their grandfather. This theme is expounded, always with frustrated attempts: the burial ground has a two-year waiting list. Mark cannot get legal advice quickly enough. And always his own stifled endeavors, lost promise, and mental challenges are there to catch him up, stop him from doing something heroic.
As someone who cremated both parents, I was able to read with detachment the sections giving Mark’s fervent opposition to cremation. After all, he is what is now called an unreliable narrator, and we all have different views on death and the afterlife. Still, for those readers who might not be able to read those sections with such detachment, I must advise caution for those chapters.
I loved the scenes with Sherry, and even the taut, frigid interactions with Mark’s parents are so real they bloom like funereal flowers. However, my favorite section of the book was the painting of Steve’s old bedroom with Sears paint Mark finds in the attic. The walls are covered with notes about the Baltimore Orioles, and Mark refuses to use primer or sandpaper before he splashes on the Eggshell White. His method is explained, and for me it crystallized the novel:
“There was a secret reason for my slap-dash approach. If I painted over the Mona Lisa, experts could remove my cheap Sears paint, and there’d she be, unblemished and all the more radiant for the world to worship. If I soaked Steve’s walls without first sanding away scuffs, smudges, and stains, the evidence of his growing up in this little house might not be destroyed but preserved. Not destroyed, but preserved.”
Because it seems we are all looking for a piece of the future, a slice of memory even after we are dust or ashes. As we write, create, paint, or simply survive, one large portion of being human is a plea that screams, Remember this. Don’t forget me. Don’t forget me, bro.

[Phil Wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The word ‘home’ raised a smile in us all three,
And one repeated it, smiling just so
That all knew what he meant and none would say.” – Edward Thomas

Did everyone actually know what he meant, or could it be everyone thought they knew and didn’t want to articulate it? Trying to say what you think you know is a good way of learning whether you really know it. Can we ever return home once we’ve left? Is home a reality that can be returned to? I remember talking to a woman about the conflict she risked in her native country. She was glad to be away from it all, but she also longed to return there. That’s where her home was.

Home is where we fit in, but some of us are so dogged by internal or external pain that we don’t actually fit in anywhere with a clean snap. We just hold our place well enough; we appear to flow with the rest of the pattern. Is home where our family is? If so, who is our family? That’s as big a question as the definition of home. Both are subjects in John Michael Cummings’ new dramatic novel, Don’t Forget Me, Bro (Stephen F. Austin State University Press).

The story is told by Mark Barr, who returns to his Alma, West Virginia, home after receiving the call that his eldest brother, Steve, has died. Steve was declared mentally ill many years ago, and no one in the family seems to know how to deal with him. He died at age 45. At one point, he was a runner with aspirations of living a long, creative life.

“Forty-five was for car accident victims and the terminally ill,” Mark says. “Steve would be so ashamed. I was glad he wasn’t alive to know he was dead.”

But Mark hadn’t talked to his brother for years before they spoke on the phone last week, and he hasn’t kept up with his other brother or their parents. It has been 11 years since he last visited, and he felt the same today as he did back then—he wanted to get out. Alma and the surrounding mountains were haunted with ugly memories of choices Mark had made and experiences he’d suffered. If this was the place where he fit in, he hated the picture it made.

“All around me,” Mark drones, “mountains were streaked brown like stained commodes, and skeleton-shell barns flashed by, as if retreating. In that moment, I felt that this land had never stopped waiting for me to return, that like an enemy, it had me for life.”

Cummings sustains a good tension throughout this family drama. Even though I didn’t like any of the main characters, I became curious enough to want to see how things panned out. One reason for my curiosity may be an overall weakness. We learn early on that Mark has unresolved issues to discuss with his live-in girlfriend back in New York City, but we don’t learn how bad they are until the middle of the book. At another point, he says he has never been asked certain questions about himself, and I wonder if he has and simply doesn’t remember. As details of Mark’s personality and life unfold, I wonder if he is a reliable narrator. Will we learn in the closing chapters that half of the story comes from Mark’s twisted imagination?

Add to this curiosity a definite plot weakness. Mark arrives at his mother’s worn-out house and soon learns his belligerent, catholic father plans to cremate his brother’s body and avoid holding a funeral. When Mark talked to Steve a few days ago, Steve had asked to be buried next to his grandfather in the church cemetery. Through all the questions and arguments that rise among the Barr family, Steve’s dying wish to be buried is Mark’s driving passion. Should he challenge the cremation legally? Shouldn’t his brother be honored in a better way than being burned up and urned up? Some fuel is thrown on this fire by Mark beginning to question whether Steve was actually mentally ill. If he wasn’t, has the family sustained unimaginable abuse on him for 20 or more years?

But even if Steve hadn't been ill and had been abused by everyone for years, why is Mark so adamant about having him buried? He hasn’t cared enough to call him for years. Why should he care now, or (as I said before) does he really care? Is this the mad fixation of a narrator who twists the world through his own unique kaleidoscope?

John Cummings’ first novel, The Night I Freed John Brown, won The Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers (Grades 7-12) and was one of ten recommendations by USA TODAY.

[Karli Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Michael Cummings’s recent novel is a heartbreaking and highly-charged portrait of one family’s struggle with abuse, mental illness, death and grief. When narrator Mark Barr’s bother dies unexpectedly, he must return to his hometown of Alma, West Virginia after a decade of absence to honor Steve’s last wishes and bury him next to their grandfather. But when Mark’s family cannot agree on how to handle Steve’s physical remains, emotions run high and each member of the family must face their personal demons before healing can begin.

Before Steve died, he struggled with severe and debilitating mental illness for the majority of his life. Between psychiatric evaluations, rounds of prescription medication and therapy, Steve was over-medicated and “brain-washed” into mental and physical submission. Mark knew that his brother struggled with depression and anxiety, but he didn’t know how poorly Steve responded to treatment, and he is completely shocked at how casually his family views Steve’s condition. They seem to perceive mental illness as a form of personal weakness – a condition to be ashamed of rather than a legitimate and extremely complicated health problem.

Having struggled with a baffling array of mental illnesses himself, Mark is grieving and looking for someone to blame. His father is the easiest target – an old, stubborn man who wasn’t afraid to backhand his kids on a regular basis and hasn’t shed a single tear for his dead son. And to Mark, neither his brothers or mother filled the role of his protector. Blinded by grief, guilt, shame, and fear, Mark does his best to punish the family by picking at old wounds and reliving painful memories. Sometimes, things have to get worse before they get better, right?

Unfortunately, mental illness does not follow traditional medicine’s formula for diagnosis and treatment. If you’ve ever struggled with mental illness of any kind, then you know how wildly inconsistent treatments can be. Some may improve the condition, while others exacerbate the symptoms. For loved ones, it is especially difficult to witness a person in this state and be completely clueless about how to help them. After years and years of this emotional and physical roller-coaster, everyone involved is exhausted and resentful – and this is especially true for the Barr family.

But Mark is no hero, either. He recognizes many of their father’s traits within himself and is constantly looking for a way to redeem himself for the sins of his past and his family. But even Mark soon realizes that he neglected his brother just as much as the rest of the family – too ashamed and afraid of becoming like Steve to get close enough to help. As the family prepares for Steve’s funeral, these painful memories and regrets reach a boiling point and Mark finally confronts the “reckoning” he predicted from page one.
Don’t forget Me, Bro is an expertly-crafted and painfully realistic account of what happens when mental illness intersects with abuse, poverty, and misinformation in the South. Alma is an Appalachian town that time forgot, which is actually a perfect metaphor for mental illness – a rugged and isolated landscape that is often neglected by its governmental and local protectors. And as a lifelong southerner myself, I can attest to this dichotomy firsthand. Appalachia contains well-maintained, highly-protected nature reserves and national parks, breathtaking views, and a wide array of tourist attractions. But it’s also one of the most deeply-impoverished, undereducated, physically unhealthy, and socially unjust regions of the country. It’s no wonder the mental healthcare system is so contradictory.

Cummings is sharp-witted and articulate in his writing – a difficult feat considering the elusive subject matter. And if you’re looking for a tale of heart-warming redemption, you won’t find it here. You will, however, find an engrossing, honest, and empathetic account of the bravery, will-power, and perseverance it takes to endure mental illness on a daily basis.

[Amy Lignor · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Home’ means different things to different people. Some see ‘home’ as a warm blanket—a place they can always go to feel safe and loved. Others see ‘home’ as a type of purgatory; an almost haunted location where a demon waits for you to be dumb enough to come back so it can destroy you completely. In this novel, the latter is true.

Mark Barr is headed home after more than a decade. He shouldn’t go, but Mark feels a loyalty that is far greater than the fear and anger he still owns for Alma, West Virginia. Steve, his mentally-ill brother, has now passed on. And Mark knows that without his return Steve will face the same ill treatment in death as he did in life from their uncaring parents.

Steve was only 45, yet this once creative man with everything in front of him had lost it all, falling into purgatory from constant abuse long before he actually did. Mark is not exactly welcomed with any type of open arms in Alma. He has stayed gone from this place, but still carries so much hostility and pain that his life with his girlfriend in NYC is anything but peaceful.

Arriving at the pretty-much dilapidated home of his mother, wounds are reopened almost immediately. His father (a loud-mouth, mean soul) wants to cremate Steve and have no funeral whatsoever even though Steve had told Mark he wished to be buried next to one of their relatives in the cemetery. Mark is more than angry about his own brother’s last request being denied. And the suffering, the calling up of the past, the trek through childhood nightmares that Mark has carrier into his adulthood – all of these area are explored.

Readers may question Mark and his motives; at times they may even question whether or not Mark might be the actual ‘mentally-ill’ character in the book. He has certainly been a victim of the constant abuse that rained down on his brother for decades, so his rage and emotional scars make for a crazed man.

This author, who is incredible when it comes to characterizations, has brought it all to the table with this one. The world of Alma is basically Technicolor for the reader, and the loveless Barr family is so vivid that you want to somehow get justice for Steve. Mark is on one heck of a quest; sometimes looking for understanding, other times looking for a way to free himself of the guilt he feels for separating himself from the situation and letting his brother basically rot years ago. But no matter what Mark is feeling, and no matter what scene is being presented, this author has made sure to explore some pretty heavy paths of abuse using a haunted elegance that makes for a unique and unforgettable story.

[Lauren Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Michael Cummings' "Don't Forget Me, Bro" is full of powerful statements that readers will not soon forget. This latest novel of Cummings', is eloquently written, yet raw and full of human experiences with which each one of us can make a connection. This masterfully written story deals with tough topics such as dysfunction within the family, abusive relationships, mental illness, and death. This story is not a cheerful "Coming home" story, yet it is real. It is beautiful

The story begins with narrator Mark Barr coming home to West Virginia after the death of his brother. His hometown has physically changed substantially since his youth, but one thing that has not changed for Mark is the dysfunction of his family. Each family member has their deep-rooted faults, from the abusive nature of Mark's father, to the naivety that his mother posseses, to the mental issues of Mark's late brother Steve, to the oddities of brother George, to the stability of Mark's own mental health, as well as his issues with attachment.
All of these faults come to a head when the family has to deal with Steve's arrangements after his death. Each family member has their own way of facing, or even avoiding, the tragedy spurred by Steve's battle with mental illness. In his own way of attempting to come to terms with the situation, Mark discovers a whole other side of Steve-a secret life of sorts that ends up causing the family to question everything they ever knew about the seemingly troubled man. One cannot necessarily say that the situation is ever really dealt with, yet some sort of suitable coping mechanism is discovered by each member of the family.

"Don't forget me, Bro" can make a connection with each of its readers. It's a novel that should rightfully grace the bestseller shelves for its brutal honesty, as well as the questions it evokes for readers and society as a whole.

[Angie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Synopsis: "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."

My Review: I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. I have read several books over the years dealing with mental illness (thanks to the Mental Illness Advocacy Challenge) so have read some dark and depressing books at times. This one claimed to be uplifting in the end but for me there was very little uplifting. It is very dark, dealing with a lot of depression, abuse and mental illness with very little signs of trying to treat, better or right these situations. It got so depressing at times that I had to stop reading for several days. There are books that can be depressing but in a good way, this wasn't one of those. In my opinion it was a little overly descriptive of non-essential items, and there was a lot of rambling nonsense that took away from the story as a whole. I guess this may not have been the book for me.

[Bookroomreviews.com leonardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author did a good job with portraying the themes of mental illness, the cycle of abuse continuing and shows how families become alienated from each other. I also think that the author made the characters come alive to the reader as you read through the novel. The beginning of the book moved a little slow but then I was able to get into the storyline and wanted to know what happened next. This book is very depressing and does not feature any happy moments. I think the author should have put some kind of happy points or funny parts to break up the seriousness of the novel. I recognize that abuse is a serious topic, but the book needed some sort of relief from the seriousness of the book. The book also needed to show or needed to talk more about how the characters would move past their emotional scars from the abuse. The book did not have many solutions of how Mark or Greg would turn their lives around and you did not see any sort of change with the Dad. Dad remained the cold and abusive man that he always has been.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the first written words, John Michael Cummings truly engulfed me into this story. This is a story of a family dealing with loss and their dysfunctional pasts. You will be introduced to Mark Barr, a man who lives with his own past of regrets and all of a sudden has to go back to his hometown to deal with the death of his mentally ill brother, Steve. The story I found was very powerful in that it gave a realistic depiction of how a family can deal with mental illness. This can be seen in every family member in this novel. My heart went out to each one of them as well as to Steve, whom was taken from the family too soon.

I would highly recommend this book. This story is very emotional and involving; I think Mr. Cummings does a fantastic job engulfing the reader into these characters' lives.

[Sandra Stiles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. The author takes the reader on an emotional rollercoaster. We get a look at a dysfunctional family and the damages done through abuse. We also look at a family dealing with mental illness. The tension the author was able to write into this book made it so real. I felt at times as if I was in the room with Mark. I almost could not breath. This is a story of a dysfunctional family that is dealing with grief and life to the best of their ability. If nothing else this book made me take a look at my own family, a coloer look. I believe after reading this book that all families are dysfunctional in some ways, yet we are all still family. I will definitely recommend this book.
I received a copy of this book to facilitate my review. The opinions expressed are my own.

[Niles Reddick · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Michael Cummings does not disappoint readers in Don't Forget Me, Bro, and I never tire of reading his emotionally charged and realistic prose. In his newest, tightly-packed novel set in the rugged country of West Virginia, John provides readers with a realistic portrayal of post modern family issues and how they are, or aren't, dealt with. The beautiful language makes you wish you had written it yourself! What pulls at your heart strings most is that John takes up all the existential issues we struggle with in our lives, grappling for meaning, as we face illnesses, family issues, and death. If you haven't read, John Michael Cummings, your bucket list is not complete!!!

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5*

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