The Incredible Winston Browne

by Sean Dietrich

I am not a very emotional reader, but that was certainly my response to The Incredible Winston Browne. This fictional work is populated by people in the small town of Moab, Florida, in the 1950’s who will fill your mind and heart as they go about their lives reacting to their circumstances the best way they know how. Sheriff Winston Browne went off to war, came back to his home town, had his heart broken, and became a quiet leader in a place where there was little crime but a lot of needs. Winston becomes the father to the town and the coach of its popular Little League baseball team, the Dodgers, named after the professional team adored by the town. 

While dealing with his own failing health, he steps in to encourage Eleanor, a strong woman who, though active in the community, has remained firmly rooted in the past like most of Moab. She is frustrated by the lack of a relationship commitment by Jimmy, Winston’s best friend. Winston also is instrumental in the future of Jessie, a ten year old girl who escapes from a religious cult. He stands by Buz, a teenage boy with a single, polio-afflicted mom and an alcoholic grandfather. Buz and his mom lack the financial basics even though both of them work, and Buz needs guidance to become the man Winston knows he can be.

Broken into fairly short chapters, the book initially takes the reader back and forth between the Moab setting and Jessie’s trip to freedom while pursued by members of the Temple Community of Sanctified Brethren who consider her an abomination. Each part is well written and engaging. Readers will want good things for the main characters whose personalities are gradually revealed by their actions as the tale is told. Jessie, in particular, is fascinating as she experiences the wonders of life outside the cult. Winston is a true hero as he quietly helps others.

The is the first book I have read by Sean Dietrich, who writes about life in the American South both in novels and in periodical columns. In this book he adds a homey touch by occasionally including a column from the local paper that is a rundown on the local gossip including who escorted whom to the movies or dinner in Pensacola and where the newlyweds went on their honeymoon. The columnist is careful to include several times that this is the second marriage for the groom. Tidbits like this one give the reader a feel for Moab and provide a little relief from the tension in the main threads. Dietrich regularly describes settings in such a way that they become real: “The county roads couldn’t have been any bumpier if they’d been manufactured by the National Washboard Company.” I will be looking for more of Dietrich’s works as he is an author with literary skills that encompass technical excellence and the passion of a storyteller.

Rating: 5/5

Category: Fiction

Notes: 1. Clean 

    2. Great set of questions at the end of the book that our book club found very helpful in stimulating our discussions about symbolism and themes.

Publication:   March 2, 2021—Thomas Nelson

Memorable Lines: 

Doctor’s offices were their own kind of purgatory. He’d endured gunfire in muddy European trenches, and he’d captained teenagers across acres of farmland littered with antipersonnel mines. But he was frightened by a little old man in a white frock coat.

It was only a practice, but people in Moab came out to see the boys play three times a week because they were bored small-town people and they would have come out to watch paint dry if there had been nothing good on the radio.

There wasn’t a boy in Moab who didn’t respect Sheriff Browne. Even the hoodlums. Everyone like the baseball-loving sheriff. Some boys even worshipped him. To disappoint this man was like disappointing Abraham Lincoln and Gene Autry at once.