Overview

It's 1966, Christmas Day, the Missouri Ozarks. Johnny Bell, not quite sixteen, is found in a snowdrift by a poor farm family named Ogletree. It seems he's an orphan, but like many a Dickens character Johnny does have a heritage, part of which is an instinct for hard work. He learns the value of friendship from a dairy goat named La, a shrewd old hillbilly named Virgil, and a humble ex-con named Clyde. He learns about religion from a well-meaning preacher who knew his father, an evangelist who became a war hero. Through his agonized, often comic travails, Johnny finds an entry into the great world of love, adventure, and mystery. An earlier version of The Ballad of Johnny Bell was self-published as Goat Boy of the Ozarks in 2011.

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Reviews

One suspects there is an ample dose of autobiographical material in these pages. No matter how much or how little of the author went into the creation of Johnny Bell, the humanity and hope you'll find herein are without a doubt reflections of John Mort. His is a rare voice shaped both by a boyhood in the rural Ozarks and years of looking back on that place and time from outside the hills. John Mort may focus his energies on the plain people in the Ozarks, but there is nothing ordinary about his storytelling. --Brooks Blevins, from the Foreword I could tell I was in the hands of a writer with serious purposes. --Steve Wiegenstein The Ballad of Johnny Bell is a coming-of-age story with a light touch and a good ear for Ozark dialect. One triumph of the book is George Bell, the protagonist's grandfather, who forces the two of them to walk from Texas to southern Missouri to reclaim the family home. Ailing and drunk, the old man expires soon after reaching this place, leaving an underage Johnny to fend for himself. Still, that voice is pitch perfect and lingers long after his death, as do the other voices of this cast of Ozark characters. There are preachers, do-gooders, classmates, teachers, a sheriff-a supporting cast of believable folks who try to befriend, shape, romance, or manipulate Johnny until his first fully independent decision closes the book. This is a good, fast-moving read. --Catherine Browder, winner of the Spokane Prize for Resurrection City: Stories from the Disaster Zone A 16-year-old boy wakes up starving in a strange room, finding himself surrounded by a family he's never met. They praise God and marvel at his resurrection, this skinny stray who, it seems, has fallen to earth from an impoverished realm somewhat above hell but long steps from heaven. So opens John Mort's The Ballad of Johnny Bell. Mort grew up in the Ozarks, as a young man planted peach trees and clawed half a living from its rocky soil. Better and funnier than Erskine Caldwell, he catches the rhythm, the sly humor of country speech. This is a fine novel. --Charles Hammer, author of Emancipating: Black soldiers (and a Peckerwood White Boy) Free the Slaves John Mort's unlikely yet believable-and likable-hero is 16-year-old Johnny Bell. Placed in the foster care, Johnny struggles to figure out his proper place, aided by a kind teacher, a sympathetic sheriff, and a hypocritical and ambitious preacher. Throw in some sexual awakening scenes, and you've got a coming-of-age tale, with fast cars, drinking, and even death. Bottom line: this is a well-written story which moves you right along, wondering how John Bell's going to make out, how he will make sense of his life. --Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, Soldier Boy: At Play in the ASA

Author Information

John Mort's first novel, Soldier in Paradise (1999), was widely reviewed and won the W. Y. Boyd Award for best military fiction. He has published ten other books, including two readers advisory works, four novels, and four collections of stories. His short stories have appeared in a wide variety of magazines, including The New Yorker, Missouri Review, the Chicago Tribune, the Arkansas Review, and in Sixfold. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts literary grant, the Hackney Award, and a Western Writers of America Spur for the short story, The Hog Whisperer. In 2017 he was awarded the Sullivan Prize for his short story collection, Down Along the Piney, which was published in 2018 by the University of Notre Dame Press. Mort spent much of his childhood in the southern Missouri counties of Wright and Texas, where The Ballad of Johnny Bell is set. Mort served with the First Cavalry from 1968 through 1970 as a rifleman and RTO. He attended the University of Iowa, from which he earned a BA in English (1972), an MFA in writing (1974), and an MLS (1976). He worked as a librarian, editor, and teacher. He lives in Coweta, Oklahoma.

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