Maureen :)'s Reviews > Four Spirits

one of my favourite all time books.....civil rights movement era, told by all characters experiencing the times from their position......rich white, disabled white, black, kkk, wife of kkk, not often a book makes me cry.....wonderful wonderful wonderful...

authors words.......

"When I was a college student in the early sixties in Birmingham, Alabama, I promised myself, if I ever did become a novelist, that I would write about the acts of courage and tragedy taking place in my city. I would try to re-create through words what it was like to be alive then; how ordinary life went on, how people fell in and out of love, how family members got sick, how people worked ordinary jobs, tried to get an education, worshiped, looked for entertainment, grew up, died, participated in the great changes of the civil rights struggle or stood aside and watched the world change.

There were many horrors and haunting events but none more powerful than the murder of the four young girls to whom this book is dedicated. In my imagination they stand in a sacred circle, a ring of fire around them. I do not step into that Circle. That is to say, I do not try to re-create them. Their families and friends are holding them dear the way they really were.

I have created fictive characters for the reader to know and mourn