It’s a hefty tome — at 519 pages, it’s probably the longest Sunday Book Club selection thus far. But it’s a hefty subject.

The second book in the Sunday Book Club’s salute to black American authors and the civil rights movement is our February selection, Sena Jeter Naslund’s “Four Spirits.”

Her title refers to four little girls who died in a bomb blast set by the Ku Klux Klan at a black church. The girls appear as spirits to various characters throughout the novel.

Naslund

The story is presented as a series of short vignettes, told through the voices of what can be considered the main characters. Stella Silver is a young white woman who at first is keenly interested — from a distance — in the frequent protests by the city’s black community and the activists’ vicious treatment at the hands of city police. As the violence and tension escalate, she finds herself increasingly drawn to the fight against racism.

Naslund also creates vivid characters in the members of the black community standing on the front lines of these protests: Christine Taylor, a mother and student who tries to balance her family obligations with her desire for equality; her friend Gloria Callahan, a shy young woman who finds the strength to open up through her involvement in the movement; Lionel Parrish, their teacher; and New York-born activist Jonathan Green.

Fans of West Virginia native Jayne Ann Phillips will recognize and appreciate Naslund’s vignettes and her similar talent with vivid descriptions and sense of place:

While she walked home through the night, it was as though she had decided to squat before an ember, to blow on it. Her heart flared big and red-hot, became a cauldron, a crucible of rage. As a child she’d seen a photo of a crucible conveying molten steel from the furnace, and the bright liquid seemed to be leaping at the sides of its container, as mobile as water in a gigantic bucket.

Touching the bone between her breasts, Christine wished as she walked that she could reach in, pluck out the cauldron with its seething contents. If only she could spill that anger out of her, onto the ground ...

She would let the anger out, stamp it through the soles of her feet.

She tried to love the quiet of the hot, still night — her neighborhood — so far from the little yelps, the police shouting, the sirens and the scuttling feet. We shall overcome. She tried to think of King’s letter, so strong and dignified. He refused to strut his stuff; with all his brilliance and all his knowledge, he refused to show off. Christine loved the tone of his writing — reasonable, sad, dedicated, brave. They couldn’t make him mad. King had no use for her rage; he wanted her to love. His sentences were the cool breeze she needed in the smoldering of the night. Let the night be sweet and kind, but she could hear the day again, the movement of feet, the assault of firemen, police, the crowd of black people, a solid square block of people set on freedom.

With the dissipation of the alcohol, every step jolted her backbone, made it ache.

Naslund’s last novel, the immensely popular “Ahab’s Wife,” was received with great applause from critics, and many have similarly embraced “Four Spirits.” Publishers Weekly praised her insight into the struggle of blacks in the Deep South when the novel was released last year:

“Naslund ... writes with a deep, instinctive compassion for the South’s tragic heritage of racial hatred, and an understanding of the high toll paid by people committed to justice. She develops her plot in a leisurely fashion that initially may leave readers somewhat frustrated, but her method eventually pays off in stunning scenes, vivid with action, color and emotion, that recreate both the horror and the heroism.”

Next month, the Sunday Book Club wraps up its three-book feature on the civil rights movement with another novel of the South, “Sugar” by Bernice McFadden.

To contact Regina C. Davis, use e-mail or call 348-7936.