Major Works
Deborah Johnson holds The Secret of Magic. Photo by Nancy Jacobs
- The Secret of Magic (2013)
- The Air Between Us (2008)
As Deborah Johns
- Maiden of Fire (2004)
- The Maltese Star (2002)
- My Dashing Groom (2002) (in Bride and Groom –three stories published by Zebra Historical Romance) by Deborah Johns, Linda Madl, Patricia Waddell
- The Lion of Venice (2001)
- Tuscany (1999)
Biography of Deborah Johnson
Writer Deborah Johnson, also known as Deborah Johns, currently lives in Columbus, Mississippi. She was born in Missouri but grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. Her father was an African-American doctor.
Kitten Epps of Starkville High School gets Johnson to sign her book. Photo by Nancy Jacobs
Johnson’s book The Air Between Us received the Mississippi Library Association Award for fiction in 2010. The book is published by Harper Collins and takes place in a town called Revere in Mississippi, where the population is diverse and segregated. It is a mystery set in the 1960’s. The story’s plot involves ten-year-old Critter, who is black and barely tall enough to see over the dashboard, driving Billy Ray (who’s been wounded in a suspicious hunting accident) to the segregated Doctor’s Hospital. Dr. Cooper Connelly assures Billy Ray’s family Billy Ray will be fine. Billy Ray dies, however, and most people assume it is just a typical hunting accident until the sheriff orders an investigation. The town’s struggle with integration becomes complicated.
Johnson published the novel in 2013 called The Secret of Magic. The story begins in 1946 when a young female attorney from New York City attempts to attain justice for a black man in the Deep South. The main character, Regina Robichard, works for Thurgood Marshall, who receives a letter asking the NAACP to investigate the murder of a returning black war hero. The letter is from famous Southern author M. P. Calhoun, and he is asking for an investigation of the murder of Joe Howard Wilson.
Previously Johnson had written four books published by Kensington Press that were considered historical romances under the pen name Deborah Johns.
Deborah Johnson signs The Secret of Magic in 2014. Photo by Nancy Jacobs.
In addition to being a writer, Johnson has been the editor for Genesis Press in Columbus and Executive Director of the Colom Foundation. Before moving to Columbus, Mississippi, she first lived in San Francisco and then for eighteen years in Italy. Three of those years she was an announcer for the Vatican Radio in Rome. She also did translations and edited doctoral theses. She has participated in the Welty Symposium at MUW in 2008 and 2014 and the Oxford Conference for the book in March 2009.