Beginning a few years before the onset of the Great Depression, Boy With Wings is a coming of age tale of a young boy having to deal with abandonment and ostracism. Even when he finds others who might sympathise, there is the danger of rivalry and exploitation. However he has tried to blend in and disappear, it is almost impossible for him. Especially when he is not sure who he is supposed to be hiding from.

Johnny Cruel has finally found a home. Though still just a boy, he is old for someone who has just found his first home. It is with a travelling show. Too small and without all the acts to be considered a circus, the show makes stops at the small towns that the circuses skip past.

Johnny is their latest star attraction. Born with strange growths on the back of his shoulders that resemble wings, Johnny closes the ‘freak’ portion of the show. He does not need to do much more than make an entrance, expose his back and let the paying audience gape in disbelief at his wings.

Johnny was discovered by Tiny Tot who runs their show. A little person, she no longer performs but manages the show and acts as its promoter and showperson. Being a little person, people tend to underestimate her intelligence and toughness. She has high hopes for Johnny’s ability to draw crowds that will benefit all of the acts.

I’ve known many freaks in my day, but Johnny is one of the purest, right there with joined twins, pinheads, and the armless or legless, far past the merely strange. Just something nature slipped up and did. There’s no wrong to it; in fact, it shows his uniqueness, an absolute difference from almost anyone else alive, and that’s a blessing to my mind, and something I know well. People have misjudged me the whole of my life, and I think with Johnny they did the same, at least at first. He was wide-eyed and sweet, just a thin kid still growing, maturing, and green. With his hair and eyes alone, we could have made money, but with his back? Ah, he was a treasure, a fable, all aces. We were set for gold.

Johnny is very grateful to Tiny Tot. Her discovery of him was more of a rescue from a short life of suffering. One of Johnny’s earliest memories is of his mother faking his death and burying him alive to escape those who had declared him a devil at birth for his deformity. His mother’s death while they were on the run, left him abandoned in the middle of nowhere without a friend.

He was taken in by an African American community who live in shacks near a pine forest where they collect gum that is made into turpentine. Living with them allows Johnny the first semblance of stability, education and friendship in his life. But he and they know it cannot last. It will only be a matter of time before the silver-haired white boy is found amongst the African Americans and no one will be able to stop him from being taken away.

Joining the show was overwhelming at first given the limited life he has had. He shares a tent with Shiela, a tattooed woman. Friendly and comforting, she makes Johnny feel at home and soon develops a maternal bond with him.

Johnny also becomes close to Robert, the sword-swallower, who goes by the stage name Zorat. A somewhat aloof man, who is ‘gripped by God’, Zorat is a strange man to find in a show like this. With an air of superiority, Zorat looks down on some of the other performers. Normally that would include Johnny. Yet, Zorat feels a strange connection to Johnny and finds himself compelled to guide Johnny in Christianity, the Bible and the ways of God. And though Zorat reminds Johnny of the people who called him a devil, he too feels there is much he can learn from Zorat.

The resentment of freaks by working acts was a factor, combined with my view that these brutes are more spawn of Satan than fruit of God. Proximity, time, and [Johnny’s] friendly nature wore me down, and I became convinced more and more that he was a gift straight from above. When Sheila left and Tot put him with Alfred, it hit me like a kick to the shins. How long would this last? I have nothing against Alfred, or Boris, per se; they work hard like I do and mostly leave me alone. I worry how they will impact the boy, given his interest in God and things blessed and religious. They harbor no such wonder, reverence, or tact. Hear, O Our God.

Unlike when he was living with the gum workers, there aren’t any children for Johnny to befriend in the show. Except one. Winifred is Tiny Tot’s daughter. Though Tiny Tot understands that each needs a friend their own age, she is not open to them becoming more than that.

The show is an exploitative environment and Johnny has to be careful of who he trusts. And while it may seem self-enclosed, the outside world has a way of making itself felt. Soon the Great Depression is having an impact. And the tall tale of a seeing a silver-haired boy with wings on his back at a travelling show might reach the ears of the wrong people.

In many respects, Boy With Wings is a coming of age story. Johnny, though, is not an heroic protagonist. He’s endured so much tragedy and extreme events in his short life and has so little knowledge of the world outside his experience, he can hardly find an internal compass to guide him in life.

Instead, he largely accepts his fate and is grateful for any respite from more suffering that he lacks any real agency. This leaves him vulnerable to manipulation and there are several suitors to Johnny’s heart and body. Some he comes to distrust but perhaps only through the influence of others who are their rivals. For this reason, Boy With Wings is told from multiple perspectives, each with a different idea of what Johnny means for them.

Johnny’s discovery of a will and purpose as he enters adulthood is the fulfilment of his story. But even then, the reader must wonder if he is really the author of his own mission or if his strings are still being pulled.

Much, though, remains mystery: the shack and her work; how he came to find her; when he must go and why, and to where.

Despite the limitations of his life experience, what Johnny has encountered can be seen as representative of the America of the time while also containing antecedents of what is to follow. Within the travelling show, there is division between the ‘talent’ – sword-swallowers, magicians, knife-throwers, ventriloquists – and the ‘freaks’ such as Johnny. Where the talent look down on the freaks who, in turn, understand there is no place for them in America outside of shows like this; no employment, no life. The talent are less anxious about the survival of the show as they can feel confident of slipping back into society without notice.

Racism is universal. Johnny is witness to it from his time living with the gum workers and later when he tracks down these old friends, some of the only real friends he’s ever had. Its hypocrisy is made plain for both Johnny and the reader when the worst period of his life follows his being ‘rescued’ from living with the African American gum workers.

While most of Boy With Wings is spent with the outcasts of this society, what we do see from the other side are lives of privilege. Much of this privilege they spend indulging vice and crime. Otherwise, they use it to keep down the undesirables who may expose their hypocrisy.

Religion has a role to play here to. It can also be a powerful tool to support prejudice. Those who use it though, should worry it can also be equally powerful in leading some to question their preconceptions and what they have been taught.

“Fierceness for good is demanded by God, Johnny. Living is violence. It’s all okay.”

As well as not being classically heroic, Johnny’s coming of age is further impaired by the deficiencies of those around him. Whether mother-figures or mentors, allies or accomplices, all have their flaws and are insufficient to truly be what Johnny needs. It lends a realism to Boy With Wings of a dangerous time and place for a lost boy to live.

Boy With Wings is a story about being different and what to do with the anger from a life of suffering at the hands of others. Johnny is different but not in the way the others in the freak show are. Nor is it the same as the racism his childhood friends live under. His anger is different too. The disadvantage is that Johnny may never find anyone who knows exactly what it is like to be him. The advantage is that he need not despair at impersonal forces too large for him to take aim at. The source of his pain is personal and specific.

Boy With Wings will be released on March 15 2025. I was provided with an advanced copy in return for an independent review.