Brawley’s life story reads like one of his action and adventure
filled novels. After college, and a stint in the US
Army, he stuck out his thumb and hitchhiked from San
Francisco to Buenos Aires, where he got a job as a
reporter on an English language newspaper. Eventually,
he worked his way around the entire world as a deckhand,
dishwasher, money changer, movie extra and English
tutor. He ended up in Paris, living the proverbial life
of the “penniless artist.” When he published his first
novel, he went literally from “rags to riches,” which he
spent by living the European high life for a few
years.
Ernest wrote more novels and since then he
has spent his life writing, teaching, and traveling. An
adventurer at heart, he has lived and worked in several
remote locales, including Bolivia, India, Thailand, and
Japan. He recently spent a year on the remote island of
Mauritius.
Ernest Brawley has published eight novels. His first,
“The Rap,” based on his experiences as a guard at San
Quentin Prison, was an international best seller and
made into a feature film called “Fastwalking.”
See Articles-Films page.
His
second novel, “Selena,” based on his experiences as a tomato
picker in the Great Central Valley. It was also published
worldwide and purchased by Twentieth Century Fox.
His third, “The Alamo Tree,” a fictionalized version of his
Mexican and American ancestors’ adventures on both sides
of the border who who rose from servants to financial giants.
An American family who would develop a small hotel into an internationally famous resort.
Featured selection at Literary Guild.
His fourth, “Love Has No Country,” set in
Vietnam-era Laos, concerns the passionate, heartbreaking
affair of an American CIA operative with a beautiful
native doctor who turns out to be a Communist spy.
The fifth novel, "Blood Moon, is set in the year
1880. An impoverished journalist, hitching
across Arizona, encounters two fellow travelers, a
beautiful Mexican girl, and a dissolute ex-Confederate.
His sixth: "Streetlight" A reporter in New York
during 1970s crime and drug-ridden nadir happens upon
information that implicates an old lover of hers, a
celebrated anti-drug guru, in in the murder of his wife.
His seventh novel, "Desert Places," is about a young
girl in the desert of California who dreams nightly of
escape to Hollywood, where she will reign among the
stars.
His eighth book, a novella entitled
"Jihadi Joe," is about two old childhood friends, one a
US military advisor, the other an infamous ISIS leader,
meet by chance on an Iraqi battlefield, with astonishing
results.
