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.
