From the acclaimed author of the national bestseller Ahab's Wife comes an inspiring, brilliantly rendered novel of the awakening conscience of the South and of an entire nation.

Twenty-year-old Stella Silver, an idealistic white college student raised by her genteelaunts, is not prepared for the events of 1963 in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. At first, she keeps a safe distance, but the mounting tragedies send Stella reeling off her measured path. She plunges into the midst of the conflict, setting off a series of changes -- in herself, her relationships, and her future -- as dazzling and powerful as the civil rights movement itself.

This inspiring novel weaves together the lives of blacks and whites, racists and civil rights advocates, and the events of peaceful protest and violent repression to create both an intimate and epic tapestry of American social transformation. Filled with the humanity that is the hallmark of Naslund's fiction, rich in historical detail and evocative in the way the best fiction should be, this novel goes beyond tragedy to redemptive triumph.