In 1963 Robert Gover wrote The $100 Misunderstanding which was about a college student who spends a weekend with a teenage prostitute, the story is told from both characters point of view. Two Brothers could be the sequel (although it is not) picking up the boys life 45 years later.

Gover is an author well aware of the cyclic nature of life. Two Brothers is about Robert and John Bradford, brothers who have switched positions in life. Growing up Robert was the dashing, athletic, academically gifted student who got involved in the radical movements of the 60's. John was the studious, introverted brother, who is more conservative and more interested in the possibilities capitalism offers. Their separate destinies pulled apart their childhood closeness, Robert's path lead to alcoholism, drug addiction and finally madness. While John followed the road of corporate investment and advancement, now finds himself a captain of industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars, with clients, houses and ex-wives strewn across the country. When Robert is released from a mental hospital with no where else to go John reluctantly agrees to take him in. Each brother approaches the situation from a position of distrust, assuming the worst of the other. As their rapprochement grows and they try to rebuild the closeness they had as children they're able, through their own experience to discover how the other felt during his life.

As the brothers are rebuilding their lives one of John's employees, a security expert hired by his corporation to protect him, turns out to be jealous of the life his boss leads and attempts to extort money from John after discovering the woman in John's life has a not so savory of a background. The addition of the mystery or thriller element adds tension to the unfolding events and endangers Robert and John's reunion, as well as John's life. Gover isn't building a conventional thriller here, with the usual formula for a thriller or a mystery is to let the tension and clues build and build to an escalating pitch until it builds to an overwhelming crescendo of revelation. But Gover uses a more subtle device, he allows for wave after wave of revelation, that at first you think the story is peaking too early but when you discover what is occurring you're drawn back into the suspense of the story as each new revelation washes over you.

Gover plays to his strengths in Two Brothers. He is a master at presenting and juxtaposing the points of view of two main characters. As you read you'll find yourself pulled into the world described by Gover, and the nuanced and deft touches of Gover's writing will leave you in awe! ( )