Four Spirits (2003) by Sena Jeter Naslund

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Four Spirits (2003)

by Sena Jeter Naslund

Birmingham, Alabama

Alabama: 8/18

   I'm mention again that Northern Alabama is the biggest literary dark patch I've observed since upstate New York.  The sole exception is four novels set in Birmingham, all within six blocks of each other.  Three of the books are works of historical fiction about the Civil Rights movement, the last is set at a strangely integrated high school.  Four Spirits is a complicated mutlti-viewpoint novel that switches between white and black characters. The four spirits are the four girls murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing on September 15th, 1963.  Naslund is nothing if not committed to the bit, including as one of her characters a highly unconvincing Klu Klux Klan bomb maker.  The characters closer to her own experience are more believable but overall, I thought the single incident was thin source material for a book that tries to convey multiple points of view.   The chapters involving the actual Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King and his local counterparts were interesting but also reminded me of the almost total absence of political fiction in this chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America- it's domestic fiction till the cows come home in the Deep South.