Coming to Town, post-visit edition: Deborah Johnson for The Secret of Magic

Q: I enjoyed hearing you read your own author’s note for the (really fantastically well done) audiobook edition. Were you involved with or have you listened to Peter Francis James‘ narration?
A: I loved Peter Francis James’s voice from the first moment I heard it on the spec. I knew he was the one to read the audio and was thrilled when he was chosen. This is a little aside: I read the author’s note and when I was working on this the director told me that Peter Francis’s grandfather, like mine, had served in WWII in a segregated army unit. Peter Francis’s grandfather had a racist officer who one day called him the N word, at which point Peter Francis’s grandfather decked him and was promptly court martialed. And who did they send out to defend him–none other than Thurgood Marshall! I’m hearing all kinds of great stories like this as I tour with this book.