The City of Churches - Hardcover

Robbins, Kenneth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1588381420 ISBN 13: 9781588381422

Publisher: NewSouth Books, 2004

In an unnamed Southern city in the hot summer of 1963, four girls die in a church bombing, a white merchant who impulsively takes down the Jim Crow signs in his store is harassed by segregationists, every day brings new protests and counterattacks, and a black handyman and a white cop are killed when a stick of dynamite inexplicably explodes between them. Thirty years later, the sons of these two men return to the city of their birth, one a minister, the other a writer, each seeking clues to the fathers who were literally blown from their young lives. Their journeys, and that of their fathers before them, are told in chapters that alternate between 1963, when the truth seemed obvious but unattainable, and 1993, when the barriers are down but the facts are elusive and often suprising. The novel telling these interwoven stories is a satisfying, compelling examination of race and human relations, the terrible cost of the sins of the past, and the promise of racial healing.

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From the Author:

"The City of Churches began as a screenplay. I dug the core of the story from the screenplay and devised it as a short story. I transferred the story to a radio script which was produced by the National Radio Theatre and aired over NPR. Then I began the novel. My life is tied indelibly into the writing of this work of fiction." Kenneth Robbins

About the Author:

Kenneth Robbins is an accomplished writer and playwright with four published novels and twenty-one published plays to his credit. He is on the faculty of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana.

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