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Two Brothers by Robert Gover Hopewell Publications
book review by Priscilla Estes
"If my money can't buy us peace and love, what good is it?"
Robert Gover is concerned about the money system and its long term effects on society. In his new novel, he tells the story of two brothers—inseparable as children—whose adult paths through life could hardly be more different. Two Brothers is a refreshing parable about the redemptive power of love, beginning with an unlikely reunion after forty-three years between political, ideological,l and economic opposites: brothers John and Robert Bradford.
Sixty-year-old Robert, the ideological former golden youth who had it all before he plunged into drugs, alcohol, and radical politics, has just been released from seven years in the mental institution and needs a place to stay. Fifty-eight-year-old John, a politically conservative multimillionaire who grew up in the shadow of his glowing older brother, is nearing retirement and needs company. Their reunion satisfies mutual needs and becomes a catalyst for iconoclastic changes, spelled out by author Gover on page one: "Shortly before I brought home my… brother Robert, I was lonely. Shortly after bringing him home, I was madly in love with a girl 34 years younger than myself and my personal security guard was trying to kill me. Meanwhile, it seemed that brother Robert had emerged from his dungeon of tragedy into the bright sunshine of good fortune. I am not a superstitious man but it had me wondering if this was some kind of transmigration of souls. Had my brother and I somehow exchanged personal destinies?"
The journey toward this swap of personal destinies is a rip-roaring, no-frills ride on delightful waves of suspense and delivers potent lessons, as do all great novels, about the power of money to save or destroy, the irony of police policing police, the universal fears of aging and loneliness, and above all, the transformational power of love.