4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings

"In 1980 the New York publisher Simon & Schuster paid a $5,000 advance to an unknown writer for a novel called Alabama Days. After taking it through two revisions, in 1982 they decided that there wasn’t a market for the book’s subject matter and dropped it.

This subject matter was the civil rights movement and the voter registration campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. To be more specific it was about the two summers of 1965 and 1966 and a group of young Catholic seminarians working at the North American Mission in Birmingham.

Today this looks like ancient history, yet many of the questions posed for both civil society and the Roman Catholic Church in particular are still to be answered. The author, James Eckardt, based the story on real events as he was one of those seminarians. In later life he went on to become a successful writer and journalist based in Southeast Asia and published eight books including two more novels. Now back home and living in retirement in New York he at last can bring his first unpublished novel to public attention."

it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings

"Great book from a first time author."