Four Spirits
Sena Jeter Naslund
On a Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, a blast rips through the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham killing four young black girls. The real-life bombing serves as the backdrop for Birmingham native Sena Jeter Naslund’s novel Four Spirits. The central character is white college student Stella Silver, who after the deaths of the four church girls and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, leaves her world of relative privilege behind to teach a high school equivalency course at Miles College, an HBCU in Fairfield, Alabama, just outside of Birmingham. There she meets colleague Christine Taylor whose impatience with segregation compels her to participate in civil rights work despite being a single mother. Christine’s friend, Gloria Callahan, a young, black musician, manages to overcome her fears to teach at a Freedom School. Four Spirits blends fictional characters of both races with real-life events and civil rights icons for a compelling look at a movement that transformed a nation. (Harper Collins)