{"id":20918,"date":"2025-03-11T11:33:50","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T15:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wfsu.org\/local-routes\/?post_type=wfsu-news&#038;p=20918"},"modified":"2025-03-11T11:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T15:41:11","slug":"mark-mustians-boy-with-wings-is-an-historical-flight-of-fancy","status":"publish","type":"wfsu-news","link":"https:\/\/wfsu.org\/local-routes\/wfsu-news\/mark-mustians-boy-with-wings-is-an-historical-flight-of-fancy\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Mustian&#8217;s &#8220;Boy With Wings&#8221; is an historical flight of fancy"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-20918-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/cpa.ds.npr.org\/s390\/audio\/2025\/03\/boywithwings0312full.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/cpa.ds.npr.org\/s390\/audio\/2025\/03\/boywithwings0312full.mp3\">https:\/\/cpa.ds.npr.org\/s390\/audio\/2025\/03\/boywithwings0312full.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>Tallahassee&#8217;s Mark Mustian is releasing a new novel. And for the first time, he&#8217;ll be among the many writers and musicians set to appear at next month&#8217;s Word of South Festival, an event he founded a decade ago.<\/p>\n<p>You could say Mark Mustian is sort of a Renaissance guy. He&#8217;s practiced law in Tallahassee since 1983. He served as a city commissioner between 2003 and 2012. And, as if he needed something else to keep him busy, he began writing novels a few years back. His first effort was entitled &#8220;The Return.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But I was fortunate to get that book published and I discovered I liked doing it and thought I had a little bit of talent, so I kept at it&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>His second work, &#8220;The Gendarme,&#8221; was a finalist for the coveted Saroyan International Writing Award, and brought home Florida Gold Book honors. And in a matter of days, Mustian&#8217;s third book drops.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This book is historical fiction, which I like. The last book, &#8216;The Gendarme,&#8217; was that way also. And this has sort of a southern gothic feel, which I really haven&#8217;t done before. So it has a mix of different things, which I like from my end.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The title of Mustian&#8217;s latest book? &#8220;Boy With Wings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The book is the story of a boy who has these strange things on his back that are like wings and he ends up in a freak show in the 1930s traveling the south. And so the book touches on a lot of things; race, religion, but more than anything else, what it means to be different.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Also, how is the boy treated by those he encounters? And how does that connect to all of us?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;How do we react to things we just don&#8217;t understand? That&#8217;s part of it and just the human level. What is it like for these people and are they better off doing this instead of trying to work at a store or something with an obviously visible oddity? So it&#8217;s all I think a very interesting topic in general.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mustian&#8217;s &#8220;Boy With Wings&#8221; takes flight soon.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The book comes out March 15th. I will be at the Word of South Festival for the first time and I&#8217;ll appear with a local keyboard player, Danny Bedrosian, who&#8217;s also the keyboard player for George Clinton.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Word of South Festival, which Mustian founded 10 years ago, comes to Tallahassee&#8217;s Cascades Park the weekend of April 4th. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2025 WFSU<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":20919,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[],"tags":[1137,1135],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mark Mustian&#039;s &quot;Boy With Wings&quot; is an historical flight of fancy - WFSU Local Routes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wfsu.org\/local-routes\/wfsu-news\/mark-mustians-boy-with-wings-is-an-historical-flight-of-fancy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mark Mustian&#039;s &quot;Boy With Wings&quot; 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