The Secret of Magic

Zusatztext Praise for The Secret of Magic "There are a million metaphors I could use to describe Deborah Johnson's writing in The Secret of Magic —but all of them are inadequate in conveying the ebb and flow of her phrasing or the care in crafting her characters.... If you liked The Help ! you'll love this one! ... [T]he cadence of Johnson's writing is an absolute joy.... I can't think of any other recent book in which I have so enjoyed an author's actual stringing-together-of-words." —EW.com “I found this story about race! The South! our country! part history! part mystery—never disappointing. Like The South she tragically portrays!  The Secret of Magic  is a layered tale of the best and worst of our history! beautifully wrought by a master storyteller.”—Robert Hicks!  New York Times bestselling author of  Widow of the South   “The secret (and magic) in  The Secret of Magic  is in Deborah Johnson’s powerful writing! creating character and story that will linger long after the reading.”—Terry Kay! author of  To Dance with the White Dog  “I am mightily impressed with her work. Johnson’s story brings authentic history to light! yet suggests a seed of reconciliation. Fantastic!”—Augusta Trobaugh! author of  Sophie and the Rising Sun  “You can almost hear the rustle of Spanish moss and the clink of ice cubes in glasses of sweet tea in Johnson’s novel! which captures the duality of the Jim Crow South…As Regina navigates Revere with both horror and wonder! Johnson interweaves her story with a novel by a local matriarch! steeping the reader in town mythology…[A] rich portrayal of Revere and its inhabitants.”— Entertainment Weekly (A-)   Informationen zum Autor Deborah Johnson is the author of The Secret of Magic and The Air Between Us ! which received the Mississippi Library Association Award for Fiction. Klappentext In 1946! a young woman attorney from New York City attempts to attain justice for a black man in the Deep South. Inspired by a true story! this "riveting novel.' (O! The Oprah magazine) shows what it was like to be a black person in the American South after World War II and how it was to be white! holding on to the last vestiges of privilege and tradition. ***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof.*** Copyright © 2014  by Deborah Johnson OCTOBER 1945 Gotcha! Joe Howard Wilson jerked and his hands went straight to his face, and then to his body, for his gun. Groping. Feeling. Saying his prayers. Checking to make sure that he was awake and what had happened in that forest in Italy, all the killing, was over. Checking to make sure it wasn’t happening now. “You all right, mister? Need any help?”  Did he need help? He opened his eyes then, but he didn’t turn them to the voice, didn’t answer it, because it was a child’s voice. Light, like L.C.’s voice had been in the dream. And Joe Howard didn’t want to go back to the dream. Instead, he put a hand on the hard thing right in front of him and realized it was nothing more menacing than a window and that this window was on a courier bus and that this courier bus was passing through Alabama on its way to Mississippi, and that it carried him home. Outside, it was coming on night. Twilight. “The magic time,” his daddy called it, “the make-a-wish moment between the dark and the light.” And the dusk, the gritty Southern grayness of it, its harsh gathering, stopped Joe Howard from seeing out beyond the solitude of his own ref lection, a soldier’s ref lection: dark hair, a trimmed mustache, eyes he didn’t bother looking into, and farther down from them, the ghostly shadow of a khaki uniform, of lieutenant’s bars and a medal. There was no brain, no blood, no bone, no friend called L. C. Hoover sprayed all over th...

Product details

• Authors: Deborah Johnson
• Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 06.01.2015
• EAN: 9780425272787
• ISBN: 978-0-425-27278-7
• Dimensions: 142 mm x 210 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Berkley Books
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature