CAUTION: RANTING When I picked this book for my book club I knew it was topical. I knew we (as a nation) need to focus our attention on the racism in this country and one way to do that is to remind ourselves what we've already been through. When I picked this book for my book club, the shooting in South Carolina hadn't happened. And the Confederate flag was a mostly forgotten relic gently flapping its message of hate at a state capitol building, and sparking the fire of racism in some southern minds. When I picked this book for my book club, Donald Trump hadn't yet announced his 2016 Presidential bid along with his racism. Let's turn to 1963. On September 15, 1963 there was a bombing at a church in Birmingham, Alabama killing 4 young girls. Children. Addie, Denise, Carole and Cynthia - The Four Spirits. The white author lived in Birmingham during this era and she promised herself that if she ever became a novelist, she would write about this time in history. There are autobiographical elements. It's not about Addie, Denise, Carole and Cynthia - it's about cross section of fictional characters, black and white, good and evil. There are a lot of characters points of view and at times I thought too many, but the author set out to paint a picture of life in the time and life in that time can only be described through many visions. It worked for me. This is a story of the most extreme bravery. I have been the only white person in a room many times and never felt a qualm about it. I remember one time I was on a local bus in Jamaica, it was PACKED and I was not only the only white person, but the only woman. I see a policeperson and generally feel safe (or that I'm going to get a ticket :( ), they see a policeperson and wonder if they are going to be killed. Today. In 2015. It IS that black and white. I applaud every person of color who ever tried to grab a burger at a Woolworth's lunch counter. Who put themselves in that seat of rejection and were rejected. I want to cry for them. To hug them, and because I'm Italian, cook for them.After the bombing, one of the characters is digging through debris of the church, looking for survivors. In his head echoes of MLK ..."I live a nightmare, I live a nightmare ... " There's a quote in the book: "In church, you have a right to be safe. Surely?" (Fast forward to 2015: Not yet.) "No safe place. She wept with shame. They allowed no sanctity, no sacred place. And she? The force of hate left her mindless. Helpless. Bound to the shame of her own helplessness. Raped again, made helpless." In November, Kennedy is killed. I've always thought of that day as the entire nation mourning. Our beloved president shot. I don't think of the past in the terms of the "red and blue" I think of the present. But it was there. Residents of the South celebrated because Kennedy was pro-integration and now he was gone. "The dusk air of the city was festive...... Everybody walked briskly. They were exhilarated, these shoppers and commuters of Birmingham." One of the characters in the book works at a gas station. He offers customers free confederate flag stickers in celebration. (Fast forward to 2015: Confederate flag patch on a jacket.)To talk about the characters and their circumstances is to recount the whole book. Suffice it to say that there were heroes, and cowards. There was great, gut wrenching sadness. There were goosebumps. There was so much fear. Palpable fear. There were the Four Spirits watching over the city. There were martyrs. Was there change? True change? We changed the laws, but did we change hearts and minds? This felt like a passion project for Jeter Naslund. I'm a fan of her other works, but there is something about this book that just got me in the core. Not sure it would impact everybody the same way, but it certainly did me. Though a long book, it moved quickly and I was completely immersed in the reading of it. I'm so glad I finally read this! It's been sitting here for AGES. But I know that the timing was right. I know that because because less than a month ago 9 people were killed in a church. And just a day before that an overt racist announced his bid for the White House. AND HE'S NUMBER TWO IN THE REPUBLICAN POLLS. (Supporting Trump is a condoning racism. No ambiguity.) This is a nation with people who teach their children racism, as Roof's father clearly did. We have to just say no. We have to make it stop. WE HAVE TO MAKE IT STOP. In Jeter Naslund's words we need "a readiness to be kind, one to another; the courage to embrace people, without regard for color, for their essential HUMANNESS."
Four Spirits is dedicated to the four little girls who were killed in a church bombing on September 15, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley's memories are a constant sorrow and motivation for all of the characters in this novel by the beautiful writer Sena Jeter Naslund, who grew up in Birmingham and promised herself, at the time, that she would one day write about the scary and sad events that engulfed Birmingham during the 1960s.We meet a variety of people from Birmingham's black community up close, as well as a few white students, a Klan member and his abused spouse, and a young man from New York who has come to the South to help people register to vote. Naslund is a painterly writer; she has the ability to make her audience feel for her characters and mourn or celebrate their fates.Since I don't remember the events of 1963-65, this book was a bit of an education for me. For one thing, I didn't realize just how many people in the South were actually gleeful about the news of President Kennedy's assassination. It was shocking for me to read that there were people in Birmingham that were not ashamed of being glad that someone was dead--and not just in private, but openly.Everything that went on--The KKK's violent attacks that were ignored by police, the segregation, the random bombings, the various tactics of keeping black people from voting, and the poor employment choices for minorities all came together to create hell on earth. This city earned the nickname Bombingham.Part of this novel involves a night school for people who need to study for their GED test, and it welcomes everyone, even though all the students are black. However, one day, the two main white characters, Stella and Cat, have decided to help out as teachers there. They have both just graduated from college, and have been brought up in homes where bigotry did not exist. Along the way, Stella and Cat face their own challenges; Stella has some lack of freedom that came with being a young woman (I didn't know a single woman couldn't get birth control pills without telling your doctor when the wedding was), and Cat is physically handicapped in a world when it was okay not to hire someone for that reason. The other teachers at the school are black, and thus they are--integrated. Gloria, Christine, Arcola, Stella, and Cat. It's a very small night school, they aren't even funded, yet they face harassment and bomb threats. It's hard to imagine the level of hatred, and why a few people couldn't even congregate in a hot room on a summer night without any books. And even if every one of them were to get his GED, it's not like good jobs would suddenly be open to them. The spirit and motivation behind teaching and learning in this kind of environment was incredible.Part of the motivation is the hope that one's children will live in a better world. And of course one's parents are everything, they set the example in both good and bad ways. Christine desperately wanted her children to better themselves, to be kind to everyone, to take care of themselves, and to be respected in the community. The flip side was Ryder, the Klansman, the uneducated bigot and wife-abuser. The Klan was depicted as a familial thing--how sad, to be brought up in the tradition of dressing like a white cone head and maiming and killing innocent people.The theme of the book is hope. In the end, we hope that the people who survived these days can look back and say that everything they did was worth it, that the friends and family they lost did not die in vain. I decided to pick up this book because of its author; Sena Jeter Naslund wrote Ahab's Wife, a book I consider to be one of my favorites of all time. And, for those who read that earlier novel, there is a nod to it, around page 142, where we learn that Gloria is a great-great granddaughter of a certain escaped slave named Susan. This novel is another example of Naslund's talent, and I would recommend it to anyone.
What do You think about Four Spirits (2009)?
Sena Jeter Naslund’s book is roughly 500 pages and I’ve read it in little more than a day because I could not put this book down except to eat and sleep. Four Spirits is about the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Alabama, and it basically starts with the horrific bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church which killed four innocent little girls of which this year is the 50th anniversary. That being said, it is filled with disturbing and depressing images, but it doesn’t make it any less poignant. One thing I loved about this novel were the many viewpoints of the Civil Rights Movement. It followed the lives of both blacks and whites during this tumultuous period and towards the end of the book, they were all interconnected with each other. Many of the characters were fictional, but there were some real people here too, such as Fred Shuttlesworth, Minister of the Bethel Baptist Church. As for the fictional ones, we have Stella, an optimistic white college student; Christine, a black teacher in her early 30s who is tough as nails but has a soft side; Gloria, a quiet shy black college student; Cat, a wheelchair bound white college student, and hilarious jokester Arcola, another black college student. While I didn’t like Stella so much (her naivete and pretension annoyed me), I had so much love for the others. I was so invested in reading this that I cried over these characters and their respective tragedies. There is a tragic event at the end of the novel that makes me tear up to even think about it because of what happens to some of my favorite characters. Most of these characters were my age and I shudder to think of what they went through to make this world a better place for everyone. You can’t help but ask yourself: Could I have had the courage that they had?Other characters who narrated the story were a Klansman (to be perfectly honest, I skimmed over his chapters because his chapters of mindless hatred were the most disturbing of all), his abused wife, a seven year old black boy, and a black hotel porter and his wife. Though not as major as the other characters I have named, their stories are still important, especially in understanding the time period. I cannot recommend this book enough. It offers a truly moving look at the horrors of the Civil Rights Movement and the atrocities committed just because some people feared allowing those of a different skin color to get ahead in the world. I would like to take this time to say Rest In Peace to all of those who were killed during this tumultuous time, especially to Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, the “four spirits” this book was named after and the driving force behind the whole narrative. R.I.P Angels.
—Ashley W
I was listening to this book on CD as I was crossing the nation in a semi. When you drive for thirteen hours a day you get bored quickly. This story pulled me in quickly. The characters were realistic and true to the period. The Human Rights struggle is something I have always been interested in. As fate would have it, I was driving through Birmingham as it got to the part of the novel where the church was bombed. Being in the city as that was playing out was too much. I pulled over to the side of the road and bawled my eyes out. very few books have ever made me feel that deeply.
—Chris L Rowan
This is an intense read following several main characters and a number of minor characters through the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham Alabama in the early 1960's. It is based loosely on the experiences of the author, and many of the events and people described are historically accurate, some fictional. It spins the story out by recreating events seen through the eyes of the different characters, including a college-educated black teacher, a handicapped person, a Klan member's wife, a young white woman who looks for someone to accept her and her views. There are times when the story gets bogged down with what the character is thinking, in that stream of consciousness kind of way when your thoughts veer into weird places, and the first half of the book takes a long time to get somewhere. It's worth getting past the first half though. Be aware if you are a super sensitive reader, this is not "The Help". There are descriptions of beatings, atrocities, etc. that are difficult to read, but remember this is based on real events in our country's not so long ago history.
—Kristine Daniels
