Article for P.E.O. Authors Section of The Record
Johnnie Bernhard, Chapter D, Biloxi/Ocean Springs, Mississippi, has written A Good Girl, a historical fiction exploring the complexities of family relationships.
In this moving novel, Gracey Reiter faces her father’s approaching death and accepts her crippling legacy, crossing a long-denied line of pain as she reads her Grandmother Walsh’s hand-written accounts from the 1840s in the family Bible.
The chaotic gene pool of the Walsh-Mueller family began when Patricia Walsh fled the famine of 19th-Century Ireland with her parents and siblings, only to lose them to disease and starvation. She finds a home, love, and security with Emil Mueller in a German settlement on the Texas Gulf Coast. Their happiness quickly dissolves into harsh reality as wars, hurricanes, infidelity, and alcoholism find them, and the five generations carrying their name.
A Good Girl penetrates the core being of all who read it, pulling back the skin to reveal the raw actualities of life, love, and relationships, told with candor and honesty. Published by Texas Review Press, Spring 2017, it will be available online and in all book stores. For more information, please view the author’s web site, www.johnniebernhardauthor.com. Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency
A former English teacher and professional journalist, Johnnie Bernhard life’s work has been reading and writing. Her work has appeared in the following publications: University of Michigan Graduate Studies Publications, Heart of Ann Arbor Magazine, Houston Style Magazine, World Oil Magazine, The Suburban Reporter of Houston, The Mississippi Press, The Ocean Springs Record, University of South Florida Area Health Education Magazine, Parent Guide of Sarasota, Fl. ISD, the international Word Among Us, Gulf Coast Writers Association Anthologies, and the Cowbird-NPR production on small town America. Her entry, “The Last Mayberry,” received over 7,500 views, nationally and internationally. Her essay, “Ignorance or Innocence” was judged by bestselling, non-fiction writer and poet Rodger Kamenetz and received “Equal runner-Up” in the 2016 Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, Essay Category. The international literary competition is part of the annual Words & Music Literary Feast held in New Orleans. A Good Girl, received finalist recognition in the 2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, novel category. She is also the co-editor of several anthologies for the Houston Writers Guild. She serves as a proud member of Chapter D P.E.O. and as a team teacher for RCIA, St. Alphonsus Catholic Church. Johnnie currently supports writers as a literary agent for Loiacono Literary Agency,