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s Toy Johnson an angel of mercy gifted with miraculous psychic powers? Or is this strikingly beautiful woman a kidnapper and killer, with a growing list of children as victims? This is the startling question best-selling author Nancy Taylor Rosenberg poses in her remarkable new novel.

Who she really is and what she really does are bewildering questions even for Toy Johnson. She only knows that a near-death experience has launched her on a journey into the unknown - a journey she is destined to repeat again and again with astonishing results. When she returns to her familiar work world as a teacher in Southern California and her seemingly ideal marriage to a brilliant surgeon, she is haunted by dreamlike memories of children on the brink of death - children she believes she somehow has saved.

Her husband, Stephen, thinks she is hallucinating. Her best friend, Sylvia, thinks she is suffering from the frustrations of a childless marriage. The staff of a high-tech Manhattan hospital thinks this is how she deals with her mysterious and frightening malady. Yet despite what anyone thinks, when Toy sees herself on television rescuing a boy from a deadly fire, she knows she is a purveyor of miracles - a living angel. But this newfound vision of herself is challenged when she is arrested for kidnapping and charged with murder.

Toy's incredible journey into the realm of magic and divine intervention climaxes in a breathtaking courtroom trial where the laws of man come into riveting conflict with far higher laws, and ordinary reason comes face to face with extraordinary revelation. While Nancy Taylor Rosenberg offers here the same gripping level of drama and suspense for which she is famous, she also opens the door to a wondrous world where the spirit can triumphantly transcend the flesh. In Toy Johnson, she has created a heroine who will do more than make you believe in angels - she will make you believe in human beings.

First two pages of California Angel

ctober 15, 1994:The halls of Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Santa Ana were empty and an ominous stillness had replaced the deafening sounds of hundreds or rowdy youths as they pushed and shoved their way outdoors at the end of the day. The school’s security officer, Adam Leonard, a robust man in his late twenties who was attending college at night to become a teacher himself one day, stood patiently by the front door waiting for the last of the teachers to leave the building. When he saw a slim, delicate redhead making her way to the door, he pushed his shoulders back and quickly slicked his hair down with his hand. He knew she was married, so it wasn’t as if he wanted to impress her. But there was something about Toy Johnson, something unique that set her apart from the other teachers. Not only were the students affected by her charisma and sense of purpose, but almost everyone who came in contact with her felt it. In her presence Adam experienced a strange urge to stand straighter and taller, to smile in spite of himself, and to speak more softly and with more patience when he interacted with the students. In one way, her presence uplifted him, and in other ways she made him feel inadequate, as if he, along with everyone else, were not doing enough. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her, slowly approaching as she chatted with a fellow teacher, her bright red hair tumbling onto her face in big, sloppy curls. She reminded him of someone out of a picture book, similar to the kind his mother had bought for him as a child. She wore no makeup and her features were so soft and delicate that they looked as if they had been sketched with a pencil and could easily be erased. To Adam, Toy Johnson was both incredibly beautiful and painfully plain. When she was among the children, he face was radiant and her eyes turned an electric, almost glowing shade of green. But when the children were gone, she appeared to be nothing more than a simple young woman, one you would see but soon forget.

“No guns today,” Toy said cheerfully as the passed the double doors with her friend and fellow teacher, Sylvia Goldstein. People around the school sometimes joked about the close friendship between the two women, for they were so drastically different in appearance. While Toy was tall and willowy, her skin fair and her voice soft and lyrical, Goldstein was short and dark, never hesitant to speak her mind, her opinions uttered in a loud, grating New York accent. Toy dressed in simple cotton dresses that fell below her knees, dresses he had heard she made herself, while her friend favored more contemporary apparel: tailored jackets, pants, platform shoes, an occasional suit with a designer label. They were just so mismatched that seeing them together all the time struck a lot of people as comical. Terms like “Mutt and Jeff” and the “Sledge Sisters” abounded. “None, no guns today,” Adam answered, returning Toy’s smile. “Tomorrow’s another day, though.” “Yeah,” Sylvia replied quickly. “Were you here the time some kid almost took a shot at us from the apartment complex across the street?” She stopped and pointed. “He was standing right there, on the second floor of that apartment complex. You know, on the little balcony. The police said he had an AR-15 assault rifle pointed at the front door to the school.”

© 1996 Penguin USA

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