Illinois Authors

The Illinois Center for the Book banner

Rebecca Johns

Born:
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Johns grew up in northern Illinois and attended Antioch Community High School.

Biography: Rebecca Johns is an author and educator. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri's School of Journalism and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is currently a member of DePaul University's English department.


Awards:

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Email: rebeccajohns1971@yahoo.com
Website: http://rebeccajohns.com
Rebecca Johns on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=rebecca+johns


Selected Titles

Icebergs
ISBN: 9781408820575 OCLC: 871200468

Two friends, Walter Dunmore and Al Clark, are the only members of their bomber crew to survive an airforce plane crash in World War II Canada. But they must struggle with the sub-zero wilderness of Newfoundland's Labrador coast until help arrives. Meanwhile, on the homefront, in a small farming community, Walt's wife Dottie struggles with her own battles: loneliness, anxiety and her attraction to an itinerant farm worker. Only one man comes home alive from Labrador, but the lives of their two families remain forever entwined. Years later, in Chicago where they've all moved, questions of loyalty and bravery ensnare their children. And as they confront the horrors of Vietnam one of them will be left to choose between revenge or sacrifice. The novel follows the characters into old age, when decades-old secrets are laid bare to redeem the present and illuminate the past.

Icebergs :
ISBN: 1582344981 OCLC: 61115482

Bloomsbury : New York : 2005, ©2006.

Alister Clark and Walt Dunmore are the only survivors of a World War II plane wreck on Newfoundland's Labrador coast, but although only one man returns home alive, both of their families' lives remain entwined through the years.

The countess :
ISBN: 9780307588463 OCLC: 699763826

Broadway Paperbacks, New York : 2011.

Johns's creepily enticing second novel (after Icebergs) travels to 1611 Hungary as Countess Erzsébet Báthory-- aka the Blood Countess-- is being walled into a castle tower as punishment for the murder of dozens of women and girls. She begins writing her life story as an exposé of the many betrayals that have brought about this-- as she sees it-- outrageous and unjust imprisonment. The steady, calm tone of Erzsébet's narration lulls the reader along so that the first hints of madness in her girlhood engender doubt and discomfort rather than horror, and as her lack of remorse and grandiose sense of entitlement are unveiled, a matter-of-fact self-portrait of a murderer emerges. This is a carefully researched story, gothic in tone and grimly atmospheric, with subtly handled psychology and an initially unassuming tone. Unlike most serial killer stories, this rewards patience and close reading--Publishers' Weekly.

 

 

Accessibility