Suspense and magic in the Deep South
The Secret of Magic is a story about the complexities of race relations in Mississippi after the Second World War.
Author Deborah Johnson weaves fiction and non-fiction into the story, which takes place in 1946 and is published by the same company that published The Help.
The fictional Regina Robichard is a young law-school graduate working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New York. Her non-fictional boss is Thurgood Marshall, who was the real-life chief counsel for the NAACP before going on to become the first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Marshall receives a letter — this part is all fiction — asking the NAACP for help investigating the murder of a returning Second World War veteran who was black.
Robichard is intrigued by the letter because it is signed by M.P. Calhoun, a renowned reclusive author who wrote a bestselling book, The Secret of Magic, during the Depression but who has not been heard of since. The Secret of Magic was a novel for young readers that included black and white children playing together in a magical forest.
Robichard is a fan of The Secret of Magic and, because she is also an ambitious young lawyer, she’s eager to go to Mississippi to investigate the murder.
Joe Howard Wilson, a decorated veteran returning by bus to Mississippi after fighting in the Second World War, is killed after his bus stops in the middle of nowhere and he is told to get off.
Marshall agrees to send Robichard into the Deep South, but only for two weeks. When Robichard arrives she discovers that prejudice is alive and well in Mississippi and that most of the town says they know who killed Wilson. Even Willie Willie, Wilson’s father, appears to know who did it. But getting any kind of justice for the murder proves difficult.
In The Secret of Magic, Johnson skilfully weaves together the past and the present, leaving readers to question what is made up and what is real. As events unfold in the book, the line between fiction and non-fiction in the original Secret of Magic book is blurred, leaving Robichard questioning whether Calhoun is good or evil in her heart.
Johnson strikes a nice balance in her novel in revealing the intricacies between the races in the Deep South and in telling a compelling, suspenseful story.