But how far back in time they should go is debatable. Of course, historical novels are more than big truths-they have a sense of historical setting. What he comes to understand is this truth: “how difficult it is to be moral.” Walter still grapples with his conflicts from that summer-his mother’s dying from cancer, his father’s collapse into alcoholism, the loss of his best friend Lamar, and, now, from his own shooting of a “papa-san” running for cover through a rice paddy–as he struggles to write a letter to the parents of an army buddy killed in a firefight. Instead, they were met with fire hoses and police dogs, under the direction of Police Chief “ Bull” Connor. An angry foot soldier trying to survive in Viet Nam, Walter Burke remembers May of 1963, when he and his friend Lamar joined the Children’s Crusade to march to downtown Birmingham to meet the mayor.

Bombingham is a moving testament to the power of responsibility and faith in the face of tragedy.This is the question that Tony Grooms, novelist and professor of creative writing, asked himself in Bombingham, for which he received the Lillian Smith Prize for Fiction. By turns both reflective and dramatic, Grooms chronicles the events of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War through the heightened perspective of a narrator who struggles to find the meaning of his role in both events.

With wry humor and haunting description, it is a portrait of the wonder and the terror of childhood in a time when ordinary citizens risked their lives to change America. Joining two pivotal periods in the American experience, this beautifully written novel from the winner of the 1996 Lillian Smith Award for Fiction makes an important contribution to our understanding of the period.

The parents' sense of security is increasingly threatened, while the children are forced to make moral decisions that portend grave consequences.Īs Walter struggles to make sense of his presence in Vietnam, he wonders if the victory of the movement meant nothing more than being sent into a battlefield of another kind. Walter reflects on how he and his family were challenged by the swelling resistance to the horrific realities of segregation in a city where little girls could be bombed in church and their fathers jailed for just looking at a white person in the wrong way. From it, he recalls the segregated city, the fledgling movement, and the momentous responsibility to act. When Walter Burke is faced with writing a letter to the parents of a fallen friend and fellow soldier, he is taken back to his childhood amidst the Civil Rights Movement. From the war-torn rice fields of Vietnam to the riot-filled streets of Birmingham, Alabama, Bombingham is the affecting story of a middle-class black family riven by its personal chaos.

Bombingham by anthony grooms