The Secret of Magic by Deborah Johnson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Secret of Magic is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Inspired by a true case of a WWII serviceman who was singled out and arrested on a bus in the North Carolina, then brutally abused while in custody for insisting on his most basic civil rights, Deborah Johnson weaves a magical realist tale combined with realities of the the early Civil Rights era. Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund figure in the novel, and 1940’s Columbus, MS, provides much of the backdrop for the fictional town of Rever). Invented characters and events, as well as a novel within the novel, provide Johnson the magical elements needed to weave an important statement on race relations in the past, present, and future South.
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Published by Kendall Dunkelberg
I am a poet, translator, and professor of literature and creative writing at Mississippi University for Women, where I direct the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing, the undergraduate concentration in creative writing, and the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium. I am Chair of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy, and I have published four collections of poetry, Tree Fall with Birdsong, Barrier Island Suite, Time Capsules, and Landscapes and Architectures, as well as a collection of translations of the Belgian poet Paul Snoek, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus, and the textbook A Writer's Craft: Multi-Genre Creative Writing. I was born and raised in Osage, Iowa, and have lived for over thirty years in Columbus, Mississippi, where my wife Kim and I let wildflowers grow in our yard to the delight of spring polinators and only some of our neighbors.
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Kendall Dunkelberg 