Brewer wrote several books on the Great Smoky Mountains, most notably Hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains (1962), which was reprinted several times over three decades. In 1969, the Tennessee Valley Authority— which was planning to flood the Little Tennessee River valley by constructing Tellico Dam at the river's mouth— hired Brewer and his wife Alberta to compile a history of the valley and its inhabitants. Their work was published by the East Tennessee Historical Society in 1975 under the title, Valley So Wild: A Folk History. In the early 1980s, Brewer wrote a series of articles documenting the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority and its effects on the inhabitants of East Tennessee. He retired from the News-Sentinel in 1985, but continued writing until his death in 2003.