A Forgiving Fire

An essential story for anyone who has faced injustice and the choice: sweet revenge or full freedom. That is the choice that arrests Johnnie Roy Houston since that hot-as-hell day in June, 1946 when this nineteen-year-old returns to the bottom land of his central Texas hometown to celebrate his favorite day—Juneteenth. But within twenty-four hours, he is seized by a pack of blood-thirsty lawmen for robbing the town’s prominent doctor of thirty dollars. As Houston is hauled to a holding cell, his eyes meet his twin brother’s eyes, who is being escorted out. Without a word spoken, their glances say it all—betrayal. A blood-stained confession and a thirty-minute trial later, a jury returns the sentence: fifty years. A Forgiving Fire takes the reader on Johnnie’s journey—from family betrayal, Jim Crow injustice, and the horrors of prison, to a harder-than-prison parole—living next door to his brother-betrayer. Will Johnnie carry out a solitary dream of getting even, or will he forgive so he can finally walk in his own sunshine, unshackled, at peace? Before him is a life-changing choice: revenge or a freedom forged by a forgiving fire. All he wants is a return of his essential, Juneteenth joy.