Huntsville-Madison County Public Library discussion

Six degrees of integration


First of all, the title of this review is not original. It is borrowed from the New York Times review of 'Four Spirits' by Will Blythe and was as perfect a description of the intersecting lives of characters in this historical novel set in Birmingham during the turbulent years of racial strife, 1963-64. In this novel, Sena Jeter Naslund is attempting to weave the destinies of at least a dozen characters on different points along the civil rights spectrum in Birmingham during the early 60's.

Sena Jeter Naslund is a native of Birmingham that lived through these years and, like her fictional surrogate Stella Silver,taught alongside African Americans at Miles College, a night school where black people of any age that had never completed high schools were taught the skills needed to pass the GED. Although Stella is the character whose experiences in this tumultuous time most closely resembles Naslund's Caucasian perspective, there are several African Americans, including cameos from real life civil rights figures such as Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as other whites, including a KKK activist and his oppressed wife.

The novel begins in May of 1963 when black people, in the wake of speeches by Martin Luther King, began boycotting in the streets and Police Chief Bull Connor ordered police to shoot fire hoses and unleash angry dogs at the protesters. One of these is a single mother, Christine Taylor, who loves her children but feels her parental duties include doing all she can to improve the social climate of the world in which they will grow up. Along with two other black women, shy Gloria and light-hearted Arcola, she also teaches at Miles. Stella's close friend, Cat Cartwright, is the only other white teacher at this school. Cat is wheelchair bound and suffering from a degenerative nerve disease with symptoms resembling ALS. Cat is as dedicated as she is physically limited. The administrator of Miles College is Reverend Lionel Parrish, a brave man battling with the external threats of racists simultaneously with the lusts of the flesh. Although he is a dedicated family man, he has one mistress and is openly flirts with Christine.

Fairly short chapters alternate between the points of view of all of these characters, primarily Stella, who at five years, was the only survivor when the car her family was riding in was swept up by a tornado. She was raised by two spinster aunts and in some ways is incredibly naive and idealistic, determined to reach self-realization as well as make a difference in the world. Throughout the course of the novel, she gets engaged twice, breaks off the engagements, then gets engaged a third time, all within a one-year time period. The first of these occurs immediately after she learns of the assassination of JFK, when her beau drives picks up the stunned, wandering Stella from the street and is not sufficiently devastated by the news. The second is Cat's brother who, almost immediately after getting engaged to her leaves for a Peace Corps trip. Ultimately, as Cat's brother, he is too much of a brother to Stella to be considered a husband. She works another job as a switchboard operator at a department store and refuses to jeopardize that job to join a planned sit-in at a downtown lunch counter, unlike Cat, who has already refused to leave the school one evening in the face of a phoned in bomb threat. Lionel Parrish tries to force her to leave for her own safety but she pulls a gun on him and is determined not to give in to fear. It is only due to the incompetent skills of the KKK bomber that she escapes harm that night.

It is implied that the bomber had a hand in the bomb that went off at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and killed four little girls. They are the 'four spirits' of the title (the novel is dedicated to them) and the church bombing is the historical climax of the first portion of the novel, seen through various points of view. The novel continues through the Kennedy assassination and into the middle of 1964 when the sit-in is planned.

The novel is like a symphony that flows smoothly for a while before striking an occasional sour note. One of the notable perfect notes occurs in the wake of the bombing:

“Every moment they breathed the dust and the odor of something broken open that should have been kept sealed.”

However, such power is counterbalanced with phrases that take the reader out of the story immediately. One is when the racist is getting a haircut from his wife.

“Now,” he said, looking down at her like a king on a throne rather than a fool on a stool. “Can I trust you, Lee?”

Although I like the phrase 'fool on a stool' it is not something his semi-educated wife would have said. It is especially jarring as it occurs in one of her point of view chapters.

Another is the first time the school is threatened blatantly. Racists have cut the power lines, leaving everyone terrified, sitting in the dark, as a man with a bullhorn hurls verbal threats after a cherry bomb is thrown on the porch. Christine suggests that Stella, who has been teaching grammar, lead a lesson of verb conjugation. “I am at school...you are at school...he, she or it is at school, etc.” This effort to continue lessons in the face of threats not only refuses to succumb to fear but calms the nerves of everyone in the classroom. It's a powerful moment. However, it is undercut with a concluding statement:

“Just before the August heat hit, the bullhorn man turned a classroom of codeine-nipping boys, young white and black women, and one woman about old enough to be a grandmother into a group of friends.”

Naslund's novel certainly does not lack ambition. However, I think she spreads her powers of characterization a bit too thin, biting off more primary characters than she can chew. While some characters are fairly well developed, other than Stella we never spent enough time in their heads to get to know them well, leaving many as superficial cliches. She presents several coincidences that link certain characters which, to her credit, in most cases she doesn't call too much attention to. However, some of these result in loose ends that are never tied up by the novel's conclusion.

Sena Jeter Naslund often presents different perspectives on major fictional or real events or characters. Her previous novel, 'Ahab's Wife,' struck me with its novelty and ambition to occur in the same fictional universe as the great 'Moby-Dick', presenting a parallel story that kept this reader interested simply by not knowing what new character from that time or tangential connection to Melville's masterpiece might appear next. Her followup novel to 'Four Spirits' which I have not yet read, 'Abundance' presents the fictional diaries of Marie-Antoinette. In 'Four Spirits' she depicts a time only fifty years in America's past, events that still feel recent to many that lived through that time. While I appreciate her desire to write about this significant time in her own life as well as in the evolution of the country, I think she aimed too close to home to hit all of her targets.