JOHNSON, Wayne 1956-

PERSONAL: Born October 8, 1956, in Minneapolis, MN. Education: Received B.A., 1983; Iowa State University, M.A., 1985, University of Iowa, M.F.A., 1989.

ADDRESSES: Office—c/o Shaye Areheart Books, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Wallace Stegner fellow, Stanford University, 1990; O. Henry Award, 1991; Iowa Writer's Workshop fellow.

WRITINGS:

The Snake Game, Knopf (New York, NY), 1990.

Don't Think Twice, Harmony (New York, NY), 1999.

Six Crooked Highways (sequel to Don't Think Twice), Harmony (New York, NY), 2000.

The Devil You Know (novel), Shaye Areheart Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Editor, Social Development Issues, 1986–89.

SIDELIGHTS: Wayne Johnson's first novel, The Snake Game, is a portrait of a community of Chippewa and Ojibway Indians and its deterioration from the 1950s to the 1980s. "Chronicling the defeatism, desperation, and the violence of the neglected poor, using unabashedly spare language—a style that stringently avoids any excesses of emotion—Johnson creates an odd tension," mused Sybil Steinberg in Publishers Weekly. "Racism, murder, genocide and sexual passions are related as straightforwardly as sections detailing fishing, welding, the molding of love charms and baseball games." Steinberg found that each chapter in the novel reads like "a powerful short story that could stand on its own," and concludes that The Snake Game is "a provocative, potent debut."

In Johnson's follow-up novel, Don't Think Twice, a man named Paul Two Persons grapples with personal, financial, and spiritual problems. Paul, a member of the Chippewa tribe, owns a sportsman's resort in Minnesota. His marriage to Irish-American Gwen is failing in the wake of their son's death, and Paul refuses financial assistance he badly needs because he suspects the man who offered it is having an affair with Gwen. Mysterious deaths near the lodge lead to official investigations and also deep self-examination on Paul's part. Chippewa lore is used throughout the novel with great effect, according to the New York Times Book Review writer Daniel Woodrell, who also voiced high praise for Johnson's style: "[His] sentences shimmer, dip, swoop and stretch. He has a fine eye for impressionistic detail and dialogue that goes sideways rather than to the point…. [Don't Think Twice] is by turns wily, sad, violent, somber and hopeful." A Publishers Weekly writer noted that readers looking for a conventional mystery would be disappointed, but credited the author with offering "a memorably deep-hued portrait of a desperate character on the brink of self-destruction."

The Devil You Know is a "tense and realistic psychological thriller" set in the northern borderlands of Minnesota, noted Francisca Goldsmith in the School Library Journal. Fifteen-year-old David Geist, a somber and lonely high school athlete, accompanies his father Max and younger adopted sister Janie on a canoe trip into the Minnesota wilderness. The long-estranged Max is recently reunited with David's mother, and he hopes that the trip will renew and strengthen bonds between him and the kids. Also lurking in the woods is a group of larcenous employees of a meat-packing plant, responsible for the theft of many thousands of dollars of goods from the company. Worse, one of them, Stacey, is on the run from the law over the near-fatal battery of a Mexican immigrant at the plant. If the man dies, the charge will escalate to murder, and Stacey is poised to slip across the border into Canada if that happens. An encounter between the family and the criminals leads to a violent attack in which Max is injured and Janie is raped. David must lead them all to safety while being pursued by the gang and its psychopathic leader, Penry. Several critics remarked on the similarities between Johnson's novel and James Dickey's Deliverance, yet the story "works on every level, echoing its similarly themed predecessors but never in the slightest derivative," observed Bill Ott in Booklist. Johnson "delivers a riveting, character-driven tale of action and loss set in a beautiful and remote corner of wild America," commented a Publishers Weekly contributor. Goldsmith called it "a strong story, in every sense, with a compelling and believable resolution that unfolds as fully and deliberately as the setup."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1999, David Pitt, review of Don't Think Twice, p. 1292; February 15, 2004, Bill Ott, review of The Devil You Know, p. 1036; January 1, 2005, review of The Devil You Know, p. 769.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2003, review of The Devil You Know, p. 1416.

Library Journal, September 15, 1990, Thomas L. Kilpatrick, review of The Snake Game, p. 102; April 1, 1999, Alicia Graybill, review of Don't Think Twice, p. 129; February 1, 2004, Lawrence Rungren, review of The Devil You Know, p. 123.

New Statesman and Society, January 25, 1991, Julian Loose, review of The Snake Game, p. 38.

New York Times Book Review, December 23, 1990, Elizabeth Hanson, review of The Snake Game, p. 12; June 27, 1999, Daniel Woodrell, review of Don't Think Twice, p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, July 20, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of The Snake Game, p. 49; May 31, 1999, review of Don't Think Twice, p. 70; February 23, 2004, review of The Devil You Know, p. 52.

School Library Journal, August, 2004, Francisca Goldsmith, review of The Devil You Know, p. 146.