Magic Time: A Novel [Hardcover]

Doug Marlette (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 3, 2006

A prize-winning Southern master storyteller weaves a riveting tale of love, mystery and justice

 

When the Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Doug Marlette last turned to fiction, Valerie Sayers rejoiced in The Washington Post Book World: “The Bridge [is] a great story—exuberant, proud, myth-challenging—and Marlette has a great, Dickensian time with the telling.” Pat Conroy saluted The Bridge as the finest first novel to come out of North Carolina since Look Homeward, Angel. Studs Turkel called it “enthralling.” Kaye Gibbons marveled at its “extraordinary grace [and] humor.” And the Southeast Booksellers Association gave The Bridge the 2002 Book Award for Fiction.

 

Marlette’s new novel, Magic Time, is a spellbinding stew of history, murder, courtroom drama, humor, love, betrayal, and justice. Moving between New York City and the New South of the early 1990s, with flashbacks to Mississippi’s cataclysmic Freedom Summer of 1964, Magic Time tells the story of New York newspaper columnist Carter Ransom, a son of Mississippi, who had the great fortune and terrible luck of falling in love that summer of ‘64 with a New York–born civil rights worker who wound up being killed alongside three coworkers. Carter’s father, the local judge, presided over the first trial of the murders. But now there’s evidence that the original trial was flawed, even fraudulent. And the question, among many others, is whether the good judge was knowingly involved in a cover-up.

 

Magic Time is that rare thing: a page-turner whose driving plot line is matched by the depth of its moral vision.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When a terrorist group bombs a Manhattan museum, New York Examiner columnist Carter Ransom suffers an emotional breakdown and returns to his Mississippi hometown, Troy, to convalesce. Carter's father, Judge Ransom, has just retired after 40 years on the bench there; his most famous case was presiding over Troy's national disgrace: the Shiloh Church bombing, in which four civil rights activists died in 1965. At the time, Carter was a local rookie journalist who met and fell in love with Sarah Solomon, one of the volunteers who died. One man was convicted, but the instigator, Samuel Bohanon, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, went free. Now, as Carter begins to understand that he has never fully come to terms with Sarah's death, an ambitious young state attorney is reopening the Shiloh Church bombing case—and she's going after Bohanon, along with anyone who stands in her way, including Carter's father, who, rumors say, threw the first trial to spare Sam. While this capacious second novel by Pulitzer Prize–winning Kudzu cartoonist Marlette (The Bridge) doesn't travel any new turf (and despite the over-the-top climax), the author writes of the South with such affection that the novel becomes one of those stories a reader doesn't mind revisiting. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Marlette fulfills the literary promise of his debut novel, The Bridge (2002), with a panoramic saga that revisits an ignominious chapter in Mississippi history. A terrorist bombing in New York City during the 1990s plummets outspoken newspaper columnist Carter Ransom into a paralyzing depression, forcing him to return home to the small southern town where, as an impressionable college student, he fell in love with Sarah Solomon, a civil rights volunteer who was among several workers killed in a Klan-instigated church bombing during the freedom summer of 1964. All local men, the murderers were brought to trial before Carter's father, a conservative judge who may have covered up information, thus allowing the mastermind to go free. With the surfacing of new evidence, Carter must confront painful memories as he determines who his father was protecting and why. A tenacious legal thriller, touching remembrance-of-youth novel, and spicy love story rolled into one, Marlette's majestic and detailed second offering communicates the assured finesse of a seasoned author. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (October 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374200017
• ISBN-13: 978-0374200015
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,482,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Past Is Not Even Past, December 10, 2006

By 

John K. Crane (SANTA FE, NM) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Magic Time: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was sorry to see this book rated less than the five stars it deserves. At times the author approaches the grandeur of Faulkner. It is a three-tiered story of the 1964 Freedom Summer. (At times the tiers of time get a bit difficult to discern, especially within chapters, but the author always provides clues as to the time period--characters on the scene, places, etc.) Faulkner was forced to use italics to separate past events from present, but Marlette has learned from Faulkner that the modern, attentive reader does not need such. The book has literally everything--love, loyalty, violence, segregation, Ku Klux Klanners, generational conflict. In the end it shows a development from the South in the 1960's versus the 1990's. Black congressman are elected in predominantly white districts, then lead charges against corporate America for environmental pollution at the cost of local jobs. The central event, however, is the 1980's trial of a man who escaped conviction in the 1960's while his cronies went to jail. (This rings a bit false in that no one was convicted in the Goodman, Schwerner, Chaney murders in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1964, a historical event this novel closely parallels and reflects upon.) There is the suggestion of blackmail in the 1980's trial, implying that a progressive judge had "let off" the current man being tried back in the 1960's. "Do you civil rights workers want THIS to come out?" The judge in question is the father of the Hero, Carter Ransom, a New York journalist sent back to Mississippi to cover the trial which could well embarass his own father to whom he is devoted. The judge owns up to his own "sin," thus defusing it as a trial issue. The man who got away for twenty years, now old and in a wheelchair, is convicted and sent off to prison where he should have been for 20 years. There is a long chapter describing what actually happened that night the Shiloh Church was burned down and four people were murdered. Marlette is clearly indebted to Faulkner, historical fact, to Diane McWhorter (Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of "Carry Me Home"), and to any number of authors who demonstrate that the past is not really past--it dominates the present. This book is worthy of the highest praise and the highest awards.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Southern Classic, October 4, 2006

By 

JEOwens (North Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magic Time: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was lucky enough to get a copy of MAGIC TIME in the early galleys and am glad to see that it is cropping up in bookstores this fall, on all the lists, as I've been telling everyone about it for months. Spanning three decades, it brings to life the South in all its mad contradiction and recounts the personal journey of a beleaguered journalist and son of Mississippi, Carter Ransom, who is compelled to return to his hometown in Mississippi and reopen wounds that are still festering from the violence of the mid-sixties Civil Rights Era. Carter is the son of a prominent judge, and his story, both past and present, is imbedded in the lives of his family and close childhood friends who have stayed in Mississippi and now, in middle-age, help him come to terms with his family's involvement in the turmoil and divided loyalties of Freedom Summer.

The story is complex in its scope, but human and hilarious in its exploration of small town friendships and big city foibles. Marlette's view of the South is refreshingly contemporary, his prose brisk and fast-paced. Best of all, his characters are true to life and laugh-out-loud hilarious. His intricate knowledge and obvious affection for small town Mississippi life is reminiscent of Grisham; his exploration of the loyalty and bonds of friendship as strong as any writer writing today. In terms of scope and sheer accuracy of setting -- from the legal challenges of reopening Civil Rights murders, to the descriptions of a small town soda fountain -- you don't get any better than this. Added to this rich mix is a flare for old fashioned story-telling, and an abiding sense of right and wrong morality that brings to life the sheer sacrifice of the heroes of the Movement, who still walk among us today.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this book has everything., October 24, 2006

By 

booklover "sally" (south carolina, usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magic Time: A Novel (Hardcover)

magic time is aptly named, because i spent wonderful and magic hours reading it. it has everything that makes a book compelling and unforgettable: lyrical, beautifully constructed sentences, true-to-life characters that i truly cared about, a page-turner of a plot, lots of romance, and a theme that highlights and brings forth important issues without preaching. i'm telling everyone i know how enjoys a good read not to miss this one!