Johnnie Bernhard's Books

How We Came to Be

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

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Fifty-year-old Karen Anders, a high school English teacher and the adoptive mother of Tiffany, comes to terms with being a single-parent and a clumsy drunk in the multicultural melting pot of Houston, Texas, as she forges an unlikely friendship with Leona Supak, a WWII Hungarian refugee, who inspires Karen to change her views on motherhood, drinking, and men. Karen’s teaching job provides an ongoing challenge with low scoring students and a lack of support from school administrators. Meanwhile, Tiffany moves to Austin to attend the University of Texas, but soon neglects her academic life when she meets a gamer boyfriend and begins a job at the Ink & Juice, a tattoo parlor-juicing bar. Tiffany hides the truth of her new life from Karen through a text-only relationship. Feeling rejected, Karen explores the paradox of romance for the middle-aged. Despite the challenges, a family unit comes together inspired by strangers and second chances in How We Came to Be.

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Page Count

204

Publisher

Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1680031570

ISBN 13

9781680031577

How We Came to be

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

How We Came to be

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

Fifty-year-old Karen Anders, a high school English teacher and the adoptive mother of Tiffany, comes to terms with being a single-parent and a clumsy drunk in the multicultural melting pot of Houston, Texas, as she forges an unlikely friendship with Leona Supak, a WWII Hungarian refugee, who inspires Karen to change her views on motherhood, drinking, and men. Karen's teaching job provides an ongoing challenge with low scoring students and a lack of support from school administrators. Meanwhile, Tiffany moves to Austin to attend the University of Texas, but soon neglects her academic life when she meets a gamer boyfriend and begins a job at the Ink & Juice, a tattoo parlor-juicing bar. Tiffany hides the truth of her new life from Karen through a text-only relationship. Feeling rejected, Karen explores the paradox of romance for the middle-aged. Despite the challenges, a family unit comes together inspired by strangers and second chances in How We Came to Be.

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Page Count

226

Published Date

ISBN 10

1680032860

ISBN 13

9781680032864

How We Came to Be

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

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How We Came to Be

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

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N/A

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Page Count

204

Publisher

Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1680031570

ISBN 13

9781680031577

Sisters of the Undertow

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

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Sisters of the Undertow

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

Sisters Kim and Kathy Hodges are born sixteen months apart in a middle-class existence parented by Linda and David Hodges of Houston, Texas. The happy couple welcomes their “lucky daughter” Kim, who is physically and mentally advanced. Following several miscarriages, Linda delivers “unlucky” Kathy at twenty-nine weeks, ensuring a life of cognitive and physical disabilities. Kathy enters public school as a special education student, while Kim is recognized as gifted. Both sisters face life and death decisions as Houston is caught in the rip current of Hurricane Harvey. Kim learns the capricious nature of luck, while Kathy continues to make her own luck, surviving Hurricane Harvey, as she has survived all undertows with the ethereal courage of the resolute. Sisters of the Undertow examines the connotations of lucky and unlucky, the complexities of sibling rivalry, and the hand fate delivers without reason.

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Page Count

228

Publisher

Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1680032119

ISBN 13

9781680032116

A Good Girl

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

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A Good Girl

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

Gracey Reiter confronts a painful past and an intimidating future with the approaching death of her father, Henry Mueller, the self-described “last Mohican” from the chaotic gene pool known as the Walsh-Mueller family. The present holds the answer, and the last opportunity for Gracey to understand her father’s alcoholism, her mother’s infidelity, and her siblings’ version of the truth. The voices of the past give Gracey the courage to find her voice. Using biting humor and gut-level truths for the first time in her life, Gracey walks across the land mines created by a crippling family legacy. Henry’s funeral and the Irish wedding of Therese Mueller, Gracey’s and her husband Mark Mueller’s daughter, coincide by a few weeks and serve as a completion of the family circle. With the closing of one door, and the opening of the future, Gracey finds forgiveness by realizing six generations of the Walsh-Mueller family, saints and sinners, criminals and heroes, the abandoned and the celebrated, are forever family, forever bound by blood and the dreams of an Irish girl, Patricia Walsh Mueller. A Good Girl examines the numbing work of raising children and burying parents through six generations.

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Page Count

204

Publisher

Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1680031228

ISBN 13

9781680031225

Hannah and Ariela

By: Johnnie Bernhard

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Hannah and Ariela

By: Johnnie Bernhard

When Hannah, a seventy-three-year-old widow, finds the semiconscious body of a fourteen-year-old Mexican national in a ditch along a remote central Texas road, she has no idea someone is watching. Not until the girl’s brutal attacker arrives at Hannah’s door in the middle of the night, threatening not just the girl’s but Hannah’s very survival. Ultimately the question of justice for a victim of human trafficking and the woman who helps her lies in the hands of a biracial border patrol officer and an unconventional small-town sheriff. The I-10 corridor of Texas connects saints, demons, and victims as the ultimate question of life and death is decided by two strangers fate has bound together. They must make a hard choice in order to survive: either follow the law or follow their consciences.

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Page Count

219

Publisher

Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0875658318

ISBN 13

9780875658315

Sisters of the Undertow

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Sisters of the Undertow

A Novel

By: Johnnie Bernhard

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

228

Publisher

Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1680032119

ISBN 13

9781680032116

Book's by Johnnie Bernhard

How We Came to Be

How We Came to Be

How We Came to be

How We Came to be

How We Came to Be

How We Came to Be

Sisters of the Undertow

Sisters of the Undertow

A Good Girl

A Good Girl

Hannah and Ariela

Hannah and Ariela

Sisters of the Undertow

Sisters of the Undertow

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