Providing a blueprint for a rich, fulfilling life after the loss of a loved one was not likely Johnnie Bernhard’s main intent in writing her latest novel, Hannah and Ariela, (TCU Press, 2022). Yet this compassionate novel set near the Texas border does exactly that. Seventy-three-year-old Hannah Duran stars in this story, although the chapters […]
Allen Mendenhall Interviews Johnnie Bernhard, Author of “Sisters of the Undertow”
January 29, 2020 by Leave a Comment
AM: Johnnie, I’m so happy to see Sisters of the Undertow in its final form. I’ve waited months to hold it in my hand! I enjoyed spending the weekend together at the Mississippi Book Festival last year. We had a great panel, didn’t we? JB: It was a great panel of literary discussion with you […]
“How We Came To Be,” by Johnnie Bernhard
December 11, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith Forget the Father Knows Best clichés of the 1950s—they are so yesterday. Set in contemporary Houston and Austin, How We Came To Be (Texas Review Press, 2018) is a witty, insightful study of the forging of a twenty-first century family. A finalist in the 2017 International Faulkner-Wisdom Competition, the novel was […]
“The Shadows We Hide,” by Allen Eskens
November 27, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Johnnie Bernhard Joe Talbert, Jr., returns in The Shadows We Hide, the sequel to The Life We Bury. Now an investigative reporter, he not only solves a small-town murder in Minnesota, but does so while solving the mystery of his own family’s past. Readers will be entertained by this multi-tier plot of murder, […]
“Mourning Dove,” by Claire Fullerton
June 13, 2018 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Johnnie Bernhard The first sentence of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina states, “Happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” For an author to successfully pen a family saga, she must dig deep into the human psyche, creating a plot beyond simplistic cause-and-effect or peopled with clichéd heroes and villains. […]