Author Releases Novel With Bermuda Angle

December 24, 2013

remedy-for-a-broken-angelAmerican author Tori Ann Johnson has published a new novel that follows the adventures of a dysfunctional family, focusing on the bizarre mother/daughter relationship that can result from such a household.

Set in several locations around the world, including Bermuda, the novel also features a character who hails from the island, giving it a special appeal to Bermudians.

Author Tori Ann Johnson’s family has a Bermuda connection of its own, boasting a direct relation to the Darrell family, making her a descendant of James “Jemmy” Darrell, the former slave who was a ships pilot from St. Georges.

Ms. Johnson attended the 2009 Bermudian reunion that saw about 300 relatives of the Darrell family come together from all over the world.

The novel is fiction, but there are some real places and people in it, including one short scene where a main character goes to see Johnny Barnes.

Called Remedy for a Broken Angel, the book stands as the latest work from an author who has gained both acclaim and awards for her work on the Disney screenplay for Ruby Bridges.

Toni Ann Johnson won the Humanitas Prize and the Christopher Award for her teleplay “Ruby Bridges,” an ABC movie and true story of the young girl who integrated the New Orleans Public School system. Johnson won a second Humanitas Prize for the Showtime teleplay, “Crown Heights,” about the 1991 Crown Heights Riots.

She has also written a number of dance related projects, most notably the pilot for Save The Last Dance, and the feature Step Up 2: The Streets. Her stage play “Gramercy Park is Closed to the Public,” was produced in Los Angeles by The Fountainhead Theatre Company and in New York by The New York Stage and Film Company.

Her essays have been published in the Los Angeles Times, and short fiction has appeared in The Elohi Gadugi Journal, Sprout Magazine, The Emerson Review, and is forthcoming in Soundings Review.

The book’s official description says, “Remedy for a Broken Angel is an 80,000 word, multicultural, dysfunctional family drama in the vein of Danzy Senna’s Caucasia and Dana Johnson’s Elsewhere California. Serena is a jazz singer whose narcissistic personality disorder leads her to abandon her daughter Artimeza, “Artie,” when she’s twelve.

“Serena was abandoned herself as a child in Bermuda when her siblings passed for white and she could not. She tries to reconnect with Artie once she understands the source of her issues, but her ex-husband thwarts those efforts. For years, mother and daughter each want to reconcile, but don’t know how to reach out.

“Then one night, Artie pulls into her driveway only to find her jazz musician husband having sex in his car with Serena. And with that, any hope for reconciliation seems lost. Artie assumes the betrayal was intentional and the event unmoors her. She’s admitted to a psychiatric facility where she delves into her childhood relationship with Serena.

“She must to find a way to forgive in order to recover and have peace, but instead, she’s driven to seek out Serena’s younger lover, Jamie L’Heureux, a successful, white jazz artist and lothario. When Artie’s feelings for L’Heureux and his for her prove oddly profound, she begins to suspect that there’s a destined design to the way things are playing out.

“The spirit of Charles Mingus thrums throughout book and we dive in and out of jazz clubs, travel to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Bermuda as these two women tangle in a syncopated mother/daughter relationship.”

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