Introduction

What does it mean to be different?

Johnny Cruel is born with strange appendages on his back, frightening his neighbors and leaving him struggling to find a home. He ends up in a “freak show” traveling the 1930s South, where he bares his back to onlookers who come to gape and fawn. Is he a horror or an angel? Should he hide himself to live his life?

With a cast of characters that ranges from the dwarf show leader Tiny Tot to Florida’s governor and a one-armed killer, Boy With Wings follows Johnny’s journey through love, betrayal, heartbreak and several murders, to reach an understanding in the place and time he may least expect.

Boy With Wings is the perfect book for book clubs, in that it’s historical fiction that’s also literary in certain respects. Immersing readers in a time and place different from their own, there’s an opportunity to be entertained as well as learn things about matters as varied as turpentine camps, carnivals and the 1930s South. It takes on the big issues of race and religion but also the feeling almost everyone has experienced: of what it means to be singled out and made alone. Reviews:

“Boy With Wings is a brilliant fever dream of a novel, a haunting coming of age story reminiscent of both Franz Kafka and Charles Dickens. Depression-era America and the carnival life is rendered vividly, but so is the beauty and courage of, yes, a boy with wings." — Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times Best-selling Author of The Jackal’s Mistress

“Mark Mustian writes with the crisp, sharp, hardhitting economy of a seasoned fighter. And combine that with the desperation, the gnawing, the fierce and loyal love of a great tale and Boy With Wings delivers a knockout.” —Michael Farris Smith, author of “Salvage this World” and “Desperation Road”

“In this propulsive tale of the magic lurking inside our mortality, Mark Mustian has conjured a surreal hero. Here is a translucent rendering of boyhood and aberration, of the fault lines of race and the frailty of religion. In sentences that are equally primal and poetic, Mustian transports us through the shacks, camps, circuses, and back alleys of the Depression-era South, asking a still-resonant question: what's the price of belonging in a society that's already broken?”–Katy Simpson Smith, author of “The Everlasting”

“…a magical, highly imaginative tour de force... Boldly original and unexpectedly profound…"—Readers’ Favorite Reviews

“Mustian’s story is a study in acceptance, diversity, kindness, and the possibility of marvels in life… Vibrant with discovery, Boy With Wings is a winner.”—Midwest Book Review

“…riveting… An evocative historical novel that celebrates distinctive individuals in the Depression-era South.”—Foreword Book Reviews

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Excerpt

A car purrs outside, its tires swishing like insects. Paul? I motion J to his cupboard, which he enters with a duck and frown. I think to freshen myself or at least brush my hair, but steps come and a knock sounds that strikes a coldness inside me. Paul or Tom wouldn’t stop and knock. I cough my way to the door, the floor tilting so that I must hang on to the wall to stay upright, the grooves worn there, the rot and stains. There’s a space between boards we’ve stuffed with socks to block snakes. I peer out at a tall man, a stranger. I crack the door.

“What is it?”

The man holds a hat in one hand. The other hand, and his arm up to the shoulder, is gone, the light falling strangely around him, slanted somehow and made shiny, bright. He’s taller than me by at least a foot, thin-mouthed and staring like a bird looking past its beak. I think of the preacher but this isn’t a preacher, no collar or cross or spec of kindness to be seen. The preacher had put his hands on me at the burial, my tears drained away then, my questions boiled up, unasked: “What is God to be more than this love?” “Is a miracle to you one to me?” “Who is it that gauges sin?” I hate preachers, you see—hate them every one.

“You Lena?”

I squint and frown. I haven’t seen him before, and I’d remember a man with no arm. He isn’t one of the neighbors. I don’t open the door.

“May I come in?”

“What do you want?” The chill works its way to my spine, across to my chest to where my nipples poke out. I draw back.

“I’m from Tallahassee.” He smiles or tries to, but it comes off as hurtful. His eyes are as gray as a cat’s. “I’m a friend of your friend.” He nods at the door again. “Please.”

I make no move to open it. “Friend?”

He pushes past, not rough but quick enough to get by me, creaking the floorboards in the pitched and beaten shack. He turns around. “I hear you got a son. Johnny.”

I’m unable to speak. Then: “I did.” I swallow. Sniff. “He’s dead now.”

The man turns back, an eye raised. “That so?”

Again, I’m struck dumb, unable to blink or to breathe. What if J makes a sound? He’s done that before and I’ve heard it, the loose walls here so thin—he’s only six years old. Seven. If I only had book-learned, if I’d had the least luck, if I’d not gone to Tallahassee, if . . . My brain can turn to rock. Everything is deception: fright wigs and a scary mask.

“When did that happen?”

I sigh. “A month back.” My legs bend and I sway with it.

“What did he die of?”

“Same thing I got.” I cough just to show him, long and with hills and bumps. He takes a step back then.

“He buried here?”

I blink and nod. Tears form and fall in plops. I hear scuffling from the cupboard or twitching or breathing, and surely the man hears this, too. I sniff the tears back.

“Where?”

“Back of the church down the road. The graveyard behind it.”

“I’ll stop by.” His eyes take in the shack’s walls, the small room, the scuffed and bulging cupboard. He pushes the room’s only door, his body slanted without the one arm, looks at the bed there, the clothes scattered. “I’m sorry,” he says. But he doesn’t sound it.

Another coughing spree spirals, long and with color. I notice a toy, a tiny train, left on the floor as if spun off its rails, misplaced there and glinting.

The man seems to stare at it. “You take care now, okay?”

“I will.” I shift and murmur, cough. I want to dance and wave my hands at him.

“You know,” he says, turning. “We heard he was . . . special. That so?”

I look up at this man who wants to take something from me, something vital and heavy and much more than his missing arm. The thought comes to hurl punches or insults or slit his throat. “’Course he was. Special as the moon and stars.” I should shout this up at him, flinging my anger through his nose and to his brain, but instead my voice is soft, still and emptied, cold. I would give up my life. “He was my son.”

The car door slams. The motor snorts like a dragon, the tires swish again in the grass.

My back heaves and tears slide down my throat. I cough brownish clots into a crumpled and gritty rag. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

1. In the end, does Johnny “believe”?

2. Why do you think the author chose the epigraph?

3. Contrast Sheila’s reaction to Johnny to Zorat’s. That of Elias? Mama Lo?

4. What does Warren mean when he says “Ain’t it always the father?”

5. Who do you think set the fire? Why?

6. How would you describe Tot’s character?

7. Clearly there are some elements of Johnny that are messianic. How is Johnny like Christ? How is he not?

8. Johnny tells Charlie he’s not an angel. What is he?

9. What do you make of McDonald, who works for Warren? What does his reaction to Warren’s death and the Governor’s humiliation mean?

10. Why do you think the author named his character Johhny Cruel?

Weblinks

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