Mark Mustian "Boy With Wings" 6/28 at 6m - Ptown Bookstore

East End Books Ptown Presents: Mark Mustian "Boy With Wings" 6/28 at 6m - Ptown Bookstore

“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

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 is the author of the novel The Gendarme, an international bestseller shortlisted for the Saroyan International Award for Writing and published in ten languages. He’s the founder of the Word of South Festival of Literature and Music in Tallahassee, Florida, and lives in Florida and Michigan.

“Novelist Mustian writes relentlessly, telling [Ahmet’s] haunting story in brief bursts of luminous yet entirely unsentimental prose and reminding us that, when life gets bloody, we had better watch out for our own humanity.”

—Library Journal (Starred Review), for “The Gendarme”

“Every decade or so, I find a novel that I sense, just by reading the basic description, will become unforgettable; after reading only 20 pages of ‘The Gendarme,’ my impression was confirmed with great force. For this decade, and this reader, ‘The Gendarme’ is that extraordinary, unforgettable novel…”

—BookPage, for “The Gendarme”

Host or Publisher East End Books Ptown