Anthony Godby Johnson is the subject and supposed author of the 1993 memoir A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story. Subsequent investigations suggest that Johnson may have been the literary creation of Vicki Johnson, who purported to be Johnson's adoptive mother. The book initially appeared as an autobiography, describing Johnson's survival of an abusive childhood at the hands of his parents and their friends, his adoption by a new family, and his subsequent contraction of HIV/AIDS.