T. M. Brown is a Southern boy at heart, although he's lived and traveled in many states far removed from his beloved boyhood roots in Georgia and Florida. He returned to North Florida several years ago while his two sons were still in school and enjoyed traveling throughout the South for business. After his youngest son went off to college, he ventured to New Orleans to complete post-graduate studies. The last fifteen years, he has preached, taught and coached in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida until his wife and he relocated outside of Atlanta where they have since retired to write, travel, and spoil grandchildren. T. M. Brown, Mike to friends and family, embraces his Georgia heritage, thanks to the paternal branches of his family tree. However, it wasn't until 2008 after his father passed did he and his siblings learn the full depth of the hard times and sacrifice the Brown family endured during the Depression, which precipitated their grandfather leaving Georgia to find work in Miami. As a child, Mike holds fond memories of warm Sunday afternoons when his Pop drove the family past Stone Mountain in the late 1950s to visit his Great-Uncle's farm. Yet, it was not until his father passed away in 2008 that Mike discovered how the darkest days of the Depression affected his father, the eldest son, nicknamed Junior. Before Mike's grandfather left the family behind to find work, Mike's dad and younger brother were sent to live with his Uncle and Aunt. The family reunited and moved to Miami just before World War II broke out. Though Snellville's dust-filled red clay backroads have been widened and paved for decades, Mike recalls the sting of barb-wire pasture fences, sipping cool well-water from a ladle, and getting scrubbed in a washtub as a youngster by the front stoop of Uncle Kerry's and Aunt Monk's old farmhouse. Retired since 2014 from the 9-to-5 life, Mike and his wife Connie reside below Atlanta near Newnan, Georgia. When not writing or traveling for book events and such, Mike and Connie enjoy sharing time with their two sons and their families. Writing about Shiloh has conjured up many near-forgotten memories, and thanks to his Pop and Poppa, he cherishes this truth - "The testament of a man lies not in the magnitude of possessions and property left to his heirs, but the reach of his legacy long after his death."
