Mississippi Author: Brooks Eason

• The author says he’s learned a few things about himself during the process of writing his books.

Brooks Eason began writing his first book twenty-five years ago, but it was long in the making and wasn’t published until 2015, the year he turned fifty-eight. The retired lawyer and Madison resident began going on annual hiking trips in the mountains of the American West in 1996 with his best friend Bobby Ariatti, who Eason describes as “the world’s funniest guy.”

“We saw magnificent places, and hilarious things happened to us. On the first night of our first trip, we were attacked in the middle of the night in a state park in western Nevada by the park’s sprinkler system—and I couldn’t shut up about the trips when I got home. After a few years, I decided to write about them.”

“I find writing to be very rewarding,” Brooks says. “I enjoy preparing a draft, making it better, then making it better again. I’m sure I will keep writing even if nobody reads what I write. It would be for just me, and that would be just fine.”

Eason has continued to write, and so far, he has six books under his belt. He gave a brief synopsis of each:

Travels with Bobby – Brooks Eason and his best friend, Bobby Ariatti, live in the flatlands but love the mountains. They explored the outdoors together for more than two decades, taking annual hiking trips to the mountains of the American West. Travels with Bobby is the story of their first six trips. Their travels began in Yosemite National Park in California. In the years that followed, they hiked and camped in Glacier National Park in Montana, Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, Glacier Peak Wilderness in Washington, the Wind River Range in Wyoming, and again in Glacier National Park. Along the way, they were attacked in the middle of the night by a sprinkler system, a free-range cow assaulted their rental car, and Bobby gashed open his head on a rock when he fell on a slippery trail, and a fellow hiker sutured it with a few belts of Scotch as the only anesthesia.

Fortunate Son – On the eve of the birth of his first grandchild, Brooks Eason learned the truth about a mystery he’d lived with for nearly fifty years: the story of his birth and his birth mother’s identity.  Perhaps even more surprising was how the story was finally revealed: It turned out that Brooks was a potential heir to an enormous fortune from his birth mother’s family.  His original identity finally saw the light of day only as result of litigation in four courts in two states, initiated in an effort to identify and find the heir.  Brooks, who was raised in Tupelo by loving parents, found out on the day his granddaughter was born that he began his life as Scott Francis, which remained his legal name for the first year of his life.  Fortunate Son – The Story of Baby Boy Francis, is the story of how he learned the story. The memoir was a finalist for best nonfiction work by a Mississippi author in 2020. Spoiler alert: Brooks didn’t inherit a penny. 

Bedtime with Buster – Conversations with a Handsome Hound consists entirely of conversations between author Brooks Eason and his wonderful dog Buster. In this hilarious, insightful book, the author and Buster debate a number of existential questions for dogs: Why don’t they live as long as people do? Why don’t they have thumbs? Why can’t mixed-breed dogs compete at Westminster? And what did a hound dog ever do to Elvis?  In addition to Buster’s wit and wisdom, the book includes more than thirty wonderful illustrations by Atlanta artist Robert Fugate. There are paintings of Buster sharing a banana split with the author, walking a tightrope wearing a tutu, topped with a ten-gallon hat riding a Rottweiler, and sporting a tuxedo and having a martini. You know, the usual.

Redemption – The Two Lives of Harry Brooks is a novel based on the life of the author’s fascinating grandfather. In the first half of Harry’s life, he left his wife for another woman, embezzled tuition payments, and sought to escape by booking passage on a Cunard liner to Liverpool. But the sheriff found and interrogated Harry’s mistress, and she revealed that he was on the high seas making his getaway. Scotland Yard agents were waiting when the ship docked, and Harry was extradited, tried, convicted, and served nearly three years in Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh. He lost his family, his job, his reputation, and his freedom. How easy it would have been for Harry to wallow in guilt and self-pity after he found himself alone in a prison cell. How easy it would have been to give up on the future and waste away his days, serving neither God nor man. But Harry did not take the easy path. Instead, after his release, he moved to the South, where he spent the second half of his life as a revered Methodist minister. He served as the pastor of a series of prominent churches and led thousands of people to God. When President Roosevelt spoke to a crowd of 75,000 in Tupelo in 1934, Harry was chosen to give the invocation. And when he died eight years later, his obituary declared that he was “a gifted evangelistic pastor, and his labors bore fruit as his churches went forward.”

Trigger Warning — Tales from a Life in the Law is a collection of more than eighty stories from the time when Brooks Eason decided to go to law school until he settled his last big case and decided he might just be retired. Most of the stories are funny, including the one about the time a colleague tried to order pancakes at Waffle House, but some are serious and one is tragic. A reviewer praised the collection, which traces the arc of a rewarding career practicing law in Mississippi’s capital city, as “a pure joy to read.”

The Scoutmaster – Lessons in Service and Leadership from an American Hero is the inspiring story of the wonderful life of Paul Eason, the author’s father. Paul grew up in Tupelo and earned the rank of Eagle in Boy Scout Troop 12 in 1939. He served in the Navy during World War II, then returned to his hometown, where he spent the rest of his life serving others, primarily as the Scoutmaster of Troop 12. Paul was a beacon and role model for three generations of young men in Tupelo, more than 350 of whom followed in his footsteps and became Eagle Scouts. The Scoutmaster includes more than forty interviews with those who knew him best, including men who attained the rank of Eagle under his leadership in every decade from the ‘40s to the ‘90s. According to one, “We were fortunate to have an American hero like Paul Eason to guide us during that all-important time when we were boys learning to be men. I would have done anything for him.” Others described him as “the most principled man I’ve ever met,” “the finest man I’ve ever known,” and “the best Scoutmaster in the world.” 

Eason has learned a few things about himself during the process of writing his books.

“I’m a sucker for praise,” he laughs. “I read a favorable review or people say they loved one of my books, it puts me on cloud nine. I’ve also learned that I love telling stories, though I may have already known that.” 

The responses to Eason’s books have been almost uniformly positive.

“After all,” he says, “who’s going to tell the author his book is lousy?”

The most surprising response came from a woman in Scotland.

“After reading Travels with Bobby, she wrote to say she wanted to fly across the Atlantic, tour America’s national parks with Bobby and me, and sit beside our campfires.”

There are many steps in getting a book out into the world. It must first, of course, be written, then edited, then published. Eason says the most difficult part of the process for him is marketing the published book.

“I don’t like it, and I don’t spend enough time doing it. Instead of marketing my last book, I started writing my next one.”

Eason does offer some advice to those who may want to begin writing.

“Do it for the love, not for the money, because you’ll probably make very little. But even if you’re not one of the lucky ones who catch lightning in a bottle, you’ll be glad you made the effort, so go for it. When I give talks about my books, I encourage any would-be authors in the audience to give it a try by telling them this: When you come up with an idea, then an outline, then a first draft, when you revise it, revise it, and revise it again because there is always room for improvement, when you find a publisher and decide on a title and a cover, when you review the page proofs and it finally goes to press, and when you receive your first shipment, open a box, and hold your very own book in your hands, it’s the closest thing there is to holding a newborn baby. I have nine children, three humans, and six books. I’m working on my seventh.”

His next book will be a novel with the working title But for Grace.

“Redemption is a novel, but it’s based on a true story. My next book will be my first pure novel. It’s about two men who grow up in Jackson and spend their careers there. They were born in 1960, became best friends when they were eight, and remained best friends until they were sixty-three, when tragedy struck. The tragedy appeared to be an accident, but was it?” 

Leave it to an author to leave his audience with a cliffhanger that makes the reader want more! Keep up with Brooks Eason’s writing or order copies of his books here.