Redemption - The Two Lives of Harry Brooks

Redemption - The Two Lives of Harry Brooks is a novel based on the life of Brooks Eason’s grandfather.

In the first half of Harry Brooks’s life, he left his wife for another woman, embezzled tuition payments from a school district in Pennsylvania, and sought to escape by booking passage on a Cunard liner to Liverpool using an assumed name. But Harry had bought his mistress a dress, a clue that allowed the sheriff to identify and interrogate her, and she revealed that Harry was on the high seas making his getaway. A cable was sent to Scotland Yard, agents were waiting when the ship docked, and Harry was extradited, tried, and convicted. He 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 North Mississippi in 1934, Harry was chosen to give the invocation. And when Harry died eight years later, his obituary declared that he was “a gifted evangelistic pastor, and his labors bore fruit as his churches went forward.” 

Harry’s fall from grace made him the man that he was. He understood sin. He understood loss and hopelessness. But he also understood forgiveness and redemption. All he achieved in the second half of his life was the result of how far he fell in the first. He lost everything and fell as far as a man can fall. He was lost, but then, through God’s grace, he was found.

Redemption — The Two Lives of Harry Brooks tells Harry’s amazing story. Harry Brooks was a fascinating man, and his life serves as an inspiring lesson in perseverance and redemption.  Signed copies of Redemption can be ordered from the author by clicking on Buy Online below. Redemption can also be ordered by clicking on any of the sites below. The eBook is availableon March 1, 2022, the paperback on June 28, 2022.