The Ballad of Johnny Bell. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.The Ballad of Johnny Bell

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.

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.