A Haunting Southern Novel of Flight, Fury, and the Strange Blessings of Being Marked Winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2025 Grand Prize for Fiction and the 2025 Eric Hoffer da Vinci Eye Book Award In the Jim Crow South, a baby is born with strange, wing-like appendages. The townsfolk call him a devil. His mother calls him Johnny Cruel-and to save him, she fakes his death and runs. So begins a life on the margins. Set against the backdrop of 1930s and '40s America, Boy With Wings is a poignant work of Southern literary fiction about one boy's extraordinary body and his lifelong struggle to belong. From a backwoods turpentine camp to a traveling freak show, from found families of outcasts to the halls of power in Tallahassee, Johnny's journey explores the lines between acceptance and exploitation, isolation and love. Is Johnny a monster, an angel, or just a boy trying to live in peace? As he searches for meaning-through love, loss, betrayal, and brutal truths-Johnny must decide whether to keep hiding... or rise on his own terms. Told in vivid, lyrical prose, this tale of identity blends elements of Southern Gothic, outsider fiction, and found family stories. Boy With Wings is a powerful meditation on identity, stigma, resilience, and the quiet miracles that help us soar. For readers of The Secret Life of Bees and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, this is a novel that lingers-long after the final page is turned.