Books with author J. M. Johnston

FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN WHITE AND BLACK in 1950s Tennessee. Tony Johnston draws on her own childhood memories to limn a portrait of a sensitive and compassionate boy fighting for a friendship his father forbids.David's daddy is determined that his son will grow up to be a doctor like himself. David studies the human bones, and secretly teaches them in turn to his black friend, Malcolm. In a rage, Dr. Church forbids Malcolm to ever enter their home--and threatens to kill him if he does. David tries to change his daddy's mind. but when Malcolm crosses the line, Dr. Church grabs his shotgun.

Dreams of escape from her privileged but empty life are only fantasies until Kristen finds a Canadian birth certificate under her mother's jewelry box. Kristen has no memories of her early childhood or her biological father. Her stepdad controls her secretive mother, and Kristen cuts on herself. Even her best friend, Natalie, doesn't know she is haunted by thoughts of suicide. The questions raised by the birth certificate are so unsettling that Kristen decides to run away.Corey was alone the night that Kristen ran away. He has a past and he is known as a trouble maker. He is blamed by both the authorities and kids in school for having murdered Kristen, though her body has not been found. Even his mother believes he is guilty. Natalie, who has her own reasons to despise Corey, grieves for Kristen and also blames Corey.But Kristen has crossed into Canada and is making a new life for herself, unaware what is happening in her absence back in Washington state. She finds a kind of peace she's never experienced, until what started as an innocent relationship with an older man becomes dangerous. Now, stalked by a real predator, she must decide whether to stay and resolve her new problem or return home and confront her former life.The three main characters tell their stories separately as first-person written responses to an English class assignment to keep a personal journal. Each struggles to face life with integrity while entangled in a web of difficult situations. To triumph, each must confront the challenge of forgiveness.

Tony Johnston's THE BARN OWLS recalls in quiet tones the memory of a barn that has stood alone in a wheat field for one hundred years at least. The owls have nested there and have hunted in the fields and circled in the night skies as time slowly slipped by. Every night, as the moon rises, a barn owl awakens and flies out to hunt. Feathered against the endless starry night, he swoops and sails to the darkened wheat field below and catches a mouse in his nimble talons. With outstretched wings, this barn owl returns to his barn nest and his hungry family, repeating the ageless ritual his ancestors have practiced here, in this barn, for at least one hundred years. Following the life cycle of the barn owl, this gentle poem evokes a sense of warm sunshine and envelopes readers with the memory of the scent of a wheat field.

Living in the Bloggins School boiler room isn't glamorous, but that's life for Martha Snapdragon, daughter of the beleaguered janitor. Life only gets weirder when Martha realizes bizarre events are afoot at the school. There's the dastardly dealings of evil principal Dr. Klunk and school bully Rufus. There's the dozen dancing eggs and the misbehaving dragons, property of the mysterious science teacher. And then there's the strangest thing of all: a giant golden spoon that simply appears one day, stuck in the wall of the school bathroom. Although everyone tries, only Martha is able to extract the spoon from the wall--an act that leads her to a destiny far beyond her meager life in the boiler room. Tony Johnston's funny, magical story spoofs the legend of The Sword in the Stone—and conveys some poignant truths about teaching, leadership, and the responsibilities we have to one another.

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The characters, drama and romance of the Petal In The Wind saga continue with Book III – The Great War…As World War I begins, Lala Hafstein returns home to her factory town north of Prague carrying a secret within her—something that would outrage her parents, horrify her future mother-in-law, and astonish her best friend. What she doesn’t realize is that they’re all concealing secrets, each more shocking than Lala’s. Secrets that when revealed, will forever change their lives, making the home front nearly as treacherous as the battlefields.

Mary Johnston was born in 1870 in Buchanan, Virginia, the eldest child of Major John W. Johnston, a Confederate veteran whose family was connected with that of General Joseph E. Johnston and Elizabeth Alexander. A delicate child, educated by governesses and tutors, she lived at home until she was nineteen; browsing in her father’s library, she became an avid reader, particularly of history. She traveled in Europe and the Middle East with her widowed father and in 1893 moved to New York. During her four-year residence there she was bedridden, and in default of an active life she began to write. Her first novel, Prisoners of Hope, written to help the family financially, was little noticed; her second, To Have and to Hold, a romantic story of the Virginia Colony, sold more than half a million copies. Her third novel, Audrey, repeated this success. Although her subsequent work was less enthusiastically received, she was henceforth provided with an independent career. She never married. Upon her father’s death, she moved to Richmond and afterward to Three Hills, the house she built at Warm Springs, Virginia. There, after an operation, she died on May 9, 1936.In the United States the historical novel, largely because of its influence on major realistic writers, has earned a place of fairly high repute. In its own right, the genre has also received the approval of a large reading public and many authors have achieved commercial success. If the achievements of Mary Johnston do not now seem remarkable, the reason is that new generations have surpassed them; in the early twentieth century, they were extraordinary.Johnston will be remembered as a creator of historical verisimilitude and as a skillful narrator. Although she did not confine herself to American locales and events, she was at her best when depicting them. The Long Roll and its sequel, Cease Firing, are romances of the Civil War period. Her zeal in the cause of women’s rights prompted her two feminist novels, Hagar and The Wanderers. The heroine in Hagar is a financially successful southern writer; Hagar is widely considered her most interesting novel. Johnston’s socialist pacifism produced Foes, which was the first of a series of novels having mystical bearings, indebted in some measure to her interest in Buddhism; of these, the most noteworthy are Michael Forth and Sweet Rocket.