Last Name Brown

Jason Brown walks out of federal prison with a shaved head, a violent past, and two crude words tattooed across the back of his skull: FUCK YOU.

Released to a halfway house in Topeka, Kansas, Jason is supposed to keep his head down, find work, follow the rules, and make it home to Springfield, Missouri. But home is not just a place waiting for him. It is an organization. A rank. A brotherhood built on hate.

Inside the halfway house, Jason is forced into close quarters with the very men he has spent years despising. He eats beside them. Sleeps near them. Works with them. Depends on them. And every day, the mask gets harder to hold.

When his white nationalist contacts begin pressuring him to prove his loyalty from inside the house, Jason finds himself trapped between the identity that once made him feel powerful and the fragile freedom he could lose with one wrong move.

Marcus, a calm and observant resident, sees through him before anyone else does. He does not save Jason. He does not forgive him. He simply forces him to face the ugliest truth of all:

Jason hates the same people he still needs.

Dark, tense, and psychologically driven, Last Name Brown is a literary reentry novella about prison, race, shame, identity, and the first dangerous crack in a man's certainty.