Publication Date: March 15, 2025
What does it mean to be different? When Johnny Cruel is born with strange appendages on his back in the 1930s South, the locals think he’s a devil. Determined to protect him, his mother fakes his death, and they flee. Thus begins Johnny’s yearslong struggle to find a place he belongs. From a turpentine camp of former slaves to a freak show run by a dwarf who calls herself Tiny Tot and on to the Florida capitol building, Johnny finds himself working alongside other outcasts, struggling to answer the question of his existence. Is he a horror, a wonder, or an angel? Should he hide himself to live his life? Following Johnny’s journey through love, betrayal, heartbreak, and several murders, Boy With Wings is a story of the sacrifices and freedom inherent in making one’s own special way-and of love and the miracles that give our lives meaning.
Mark Mustian immerses us in a complete sensory experience from the first sentence of Boy With Wings. Johnny’s struggle is immediate. He is a small boy in 1926 and is different. So different that his mother must choose the unthinkable and teach her son the harsh realities of survival of those with no power.
Johnny’s body grows extra flesh and muscle along his shoulder blades. This may symbolically resemble the mark of an angel, but those who have spotted his “wings” find all sorts of reasons to fear him and to spread this fear. His mother protects him, hides him, and searches for refuge until fate intervenes and Johnny’s existence is left to circumstance.
He becomes part of a Negro camp whose members are treated as outcasts and who collectively find a way to exist with the barest of necessities. Taking in Johnny, an odd-looking 7-year-old, is a risk to them all. It is here that Johnny will find his first understanding of community. In the camp, he soon forgets he was ever an outsider, but he has no power, and neither do the Negros, who have been the only models of kindness and acceptance he will have in his life.
Mustian spares us with only a short scene of the horror of Johnny’s next stop in existence, as his lot in life seems to leave no room for humanity. But he seems to be saved by Tiny Tot, who is searching for the next big act in her traveling show of oddities. So, in the time of the Great Depression, we follow Johnny as he uses his deformity to manage an existence of survival while he comes of age. He finds friendship, acceptance, and even love in the confines of the world of the freak show. But a threat is lurking. Who would want or care to take what little he has found? The story is layered with surprise, and Johnny will fight for survival until the very end.
Johnny is Mark Mustian’s Boy With Wings, who, with little choice in the years of The Great Depression, will find the means to survive his lot in life and look for acceptance.
MARK MUSTIAN is the author of the novels “The Return” and “The Gendarme,” the latter an international bestseller that has been published in eleven languages. He was a finalist for the Dayton International Literary Peace Prize, shortlisted for the Saroyan International Award for Writing, and the winner of the Florida Gold Book Award for fiction. He is the founder and president of the Word of South Festival of Literature and Music in Tallahassee, Florida, now in its tenth year. A former elected official and an attorney, he lives in Florida and Michigan with his wife and elderly dog.
