Johnnie Bernhard

How We Came to Be is a triumph of order from chaos as told in the most accessible first-person voice I’ve had the good fortune to come across in ages. I was under narrator Karen Anders’ spell from the first because author Johnnie Bernhard came out swinging by gifting the reader with this engaging novel’s premise by the third page. Karen doesn’t look good on paper. She is a fifty-year-old, high school English teacher living in Houston; a divorced, single mother facing empty-nest syndrome, well aware of her dependency on alcohol, but nowhere near ready to quit. Why should she? Karen’s life is a mess. One would think this is a recipe for a down on its heels story, but the reader is captivated by Karen’s tell-it-as-it-is persona and—dare I say it, identifies when Karen summarizes her circumstances by confessing, “I’m hating every moment, but pretending I’m having the time of my life.” When I got to this line, I knew I was hooked.
We all have that sardonic friend who manages to smile through the egg on her face. This is Karen in a nutshell, and she keeps on keeping on, trying for the upper hand, while her adopted daughter, Tiffany’s first three months away at college become a study in bad choices, of which Karen has no say beyond putting out the fires. Karen’s dilemma is a common one and raises the question of how to be an effective single parent without chasing her daughter away.
In the meantime, back at the empty nest, Karen knows she must forge a life beyond the rat-wheel of predictable sameness centered on her Houston high school’s schedule. In an uncanny act of timing, Karen’s world is widened when she is befriended by WW11 Hungarian refugee, Leona Supak from across the street, and an unlikely alliance is formed that challenges Karen to grow. Having been single for decades and barely hanging on, it probably isn’t the best time for a man to come into Karen’s life, yet when Matt Broussard pursues the surprised Karen in an Austin bar, she thinks, maybe?
How We Came to Be is a brass-tacks, contemporary story without a moment of campy pretention. The events are cause and effect, but the story is what goes on in the likable Karen’s head. She is not so much a victim of circumstances as she is a neophyte at growing into her own. How We Came to Be is the story of a woman drowning in deep waters, who has the sense to learn how to swim.
I applaud author Johnnie Bernhard for her wizardry in crafting this perfectly paced story in a voice so unique and compelling. This is a book to read and return to. It is perfect for book clubs because there is so much in it to discuss!… (altro)

Karen Anders is a divorced 50-year-old high school English teacher who adopted her brother’s daughter Tiffany. Karen has a tendency to overdrink when she is in pity mode – and that is often. She envisions that her tombstone will read “Average English teacher who drank daily”. She is at the point in her life where Tiffany is gaining her independence and Karen is overwhelmed with the “empty nest” syndrome.

Karen has never gotten along with her neighbor Leona Supak, a WWII Hungarian refugee. But then one morning Karen has an encounter with her cranky neighbor that leads to an unlikely friendship between the two women. Leona is tough and pulls no punches. She seems cold on the outside but has the same need that Karen does. They both need family. This book is the story of how they came to be family to each other.

It is through Leona that Karen finds the strength to deal with life’s problems – without drinking. Both Karen’s and Tiffany’s lives are improved when Leona takes them into her heart. Even Karen’s students benefit from the change in Karen.

Ms. Bernhard gives us a beautiful story of teenage angst, floundering adults, broken lives, love and heartbreak, second chances, and redemption. The characters are flawed and genuine, the situations real to life. Somewhere along their journey, I came to love her characters.

This book teaches us that sometimes your family is not the one you are born into. It is the one that forms when you open your heart to others and let them in. You may even find some romance along the way.… (altro)

HISTORICAL FICTION
Johnnie Bernhard
A Good Girl
Texas Review Press
Paperback, 978-1-6800-3121-8, (also available as an e-book), 288 pgs., $20.95
March 2017

Fifty-two-year-old Grace Reiter is returning home to South Texas, “a place she spent a lifetime running from,” as her father, Henry, “the last surviving patriarch of a chaotic gene pool,” lies in a hospital bed dying from colon cancer and a heart “shriveled from disease and disappointment.” Grace is the middle child, the dutiful peacemaker, sandwiched between her older brother, Tom, and her younger sister, Angela. Henry, the product of a legacy of alcoholism and abandonment, has been a difficult father; now that he’s dying, he wants devoted children. Grace knows she must learn to forgive Henry to save her troubled marriage, and avoid spending the remainder of her years embittered by regret and resentment.

A Good Girl is the debut novel, equal parts contemporary and historical fiction, from Johnnie Bernhard. I was instantly drawn in by Grace’s voice and Bernhard’s skillful use of small details to build a rich, dimensional portrait of a people and a place. Bernhard explores universal themes of redemption, hope, and forgiveness, as Grace progresses in her interior exploration of character and motivation.

Bernhard’s flawed characters are sympathetic, their dysfunctional family dynamics authentic. Grace sometimes provokes impatience as she indulges in self-pity, but her development is handled deftly. When the siblings meet at the house where they grew up, the scenes are fraught with the weight of secrets and misunderstandings. Irma, Henry’s girlfriend, “a love affair that began with a feud across a six-foot privacy fence,” is a hoot, a “mixture of post-WWII working woman and redneck hoarder” who doesn’t leave home without her personal ashtray.

A Good Girl moves at a swift, steady pace. Though Grace’s musings become repetitive and overly sentimental during the middle of her third-person narration, her wry humor is the antidote. Her commentary on “a culture that based its world view on cable news and elementary-level geography lessons” is spot-on.

Bernhard can turn a phrase (“I-10 West was a 500-mile umbilical cord”), and her word choices are precise (“so much of her father’s life was hearsay”), her dialogue engaging (“[Mama] was dead at sixty, Tom, because she pushed a rock up a hill every day of her life. A rock called Henry”).

A Good Girl employs frequent, lengthy flashbacks, tracing “two hundred years of a chaotic family history [that] began with an Irish girl, Patricia Walsh of County Galway, Ireland.” The family tree inserted after the title page is a nice touch and proves useful. Bernhard does a neat job of fitting the fictional family biography into the chronicle of Texas history, and she’s obviously familiar with small-town Texas. Changes between contemporary settings and historical periods are appropriately marked by shifts in tone and style, though a light copyedit would improve the work before its next printing. That Grace’s daughter is marrying an Irishman she met at college, and moving to Ireland, is an inspired touch that bring the story full circle, enabling a satisfying ending.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.… (altro)