Sena Jeter Naslund dedicates her new novel, FOUR SPIRITS, to the
memories of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and
Cynthia Wesley. While these names may not seem immediately
familiar, they are important: to quote Naslund's dedication, these
four girls were "killed Sunday, September 15, 1963, in the racist
bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama, as
they prepared to participate in a Youth Worship Service."

Such a dedication is appropriate, given that FOUR SPIRITS recounts
that bombing and the civil rights demonstrations of that year. On
the same page, however, Naslund includes a verse of the old Sunday
school hymn, "Jesus Loves the Little Children," and what had been a
heartfelt acknowledgment of her muse becomes embarrassingly
sanctimonious, a warning that Naslund may oversimplify the
astoundingly complicated race issue in the pages that follow. It
raises the expectation --- and the fear --- that her black
characters will be courageous and spiritual, free of all hate and
malice, while the white people will be shallow and unbelieving,
perhaps evil.

Then again, Naslund, a Birmingham native, is a white author writing
about a black cause, which carries a whiff of appropriation.
Furthermore, she writes from the points of view of several black
characters. So at the outset, whatever sanctimony creeps into the
novel is leavened by the tightrope nature of the project itself: if
her black characters were to feel false or one-dimensional, then
the message as well as the drama suffers. To her credit, Naslund
seems aware of the received opinions and easy truths regarding this
period in local and national history, and she manages to dig deeper
and uncover startling and original insights about race, class and
social upheaval.

With a large cast of characters representing the spectrum of the
city's population, FOUR SPIRITS is appropriately epic: its scope
feels wide enough to capture the dramatic social and political
revolution represented not only by these four girls, but also by
Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolence movement. Naslund writes in
many black points of view, including those of Reverend Fred
Shuttlesworth, the preacher who organized the city's grassroots
demonstrations long before King took center stage; Christine
Taylor, a mother of three and a night school teacher; and her
friend Gloria, a cello player who is cripplingly shy.

However, the novel's most intriguing and unpredictable black
character is TJ, a hotel clerk, adoring husband, and veteran of the
Korean War. Because his strongest and most immediate reaction to
the racial injustice around him is violence, he is drawn to King's
message of nonviolence: "he had to get into the heart of that idea
before he killed somebody again. Killed somebody in his own
country."

On the opposite side of the race fence is Ryder Jones, a white gas
station attendant whose poverty feeds his racist fervor. Not only
is he an active Klansman who despises Jews and Catholics as well as
blacks, he emotionally and physically abuses his wife Lee, who
becomes increasingly defiant as she realizes the depths of his
hatred.

Not all of Naslund's white characters are so compromised. In fact,
the novel's most intricately drawn and compelling character is a
twenty-year-old orphan named Stella Silver, a philosophy student at
Birmingham Southern University. Her strong reactions to local and
national tragedies, and her efforts to define herself, give the
novel an emotional heft that rivals its scope.

Naslund accommodates this large cast through short chapters, which
range from a few paragraphs to a few pages. She makes good use of
the limited space, painting her characters in focused, concise
brushstrokes, but the many cutaways are jarring and abrupt,
detracting from the drama rather than intensifying it. For example,
when the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church explodes, Naslund recounts
it from several shifting points of view, which lessens the event's
immediacy and horror.

FOUR SPIRITS is at its best when it follows a character around for
hours and pages, when it lingers long enough to capture a range of
emotions. It's highly revealing that the novel's strongest chapter
--- which recounts almost moment by moment the day when Stella
learns of President Kennedy's assassination --- is also one of its
longest.

On the other hand, these short, fast chapters allow Naslund to
strike a fine balance between white and black perspectives and
fashion an integrated novel. For her and her characters, the civil
rights movement is neither a black story nor a white story --- it
is both --- and as such it is endlessly complicated. Naslund
courageously tries to capture the era's complexity and honor the
magnitude of these events. That she is not entirely successful does
not diminish the nobleness of the undertaking.

Though flawed, FOUR SPIRITS is an act of empathy, which is the
heart of all literary endeavors.