Summary

The author of the critically acclaimed "Ahab's Wife" delivers a stunning novel about a young girl coming to terms with civil rights and a changing world.

Author Biography

Sena Jeter Naslund is Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Louisville.

Prelude: Old Times There, 1948
Helicon, Alabama	p. 3
Unleashing the Dogs, May 1963
Stella	p. 15
Christine	p. 19
Edmund	p. 22
Darl	p. 24
Bobby Jones	p. 27
TJ	p. 29
At the Athens	p. 35
Gloria at Home	p. 38
Edmund at Home	p. 40
Christine Walking	p. 41
Fielding's Department Store	p. 49
Mr. Fielding	p. 52
At the Bankhead Hotel	p. 54
On the Vespa	p. 55
Night Duty	p. 57
Night Pleasure	p. 59
Christine at Home	p. 63
Engaged	p. 65
Fred Shuttlesworth	p. 70
Wanting Bach	p. 72
King	p. 77
The Telephone, the Microphone	p. 81
Ryder Jones	p. 85
Gloria's Thought Book	p. 88
Ryder's Second House	p. 91
Lee	p. 96
Martini: Christine and Gloria	p. 100
At Fielding's	p. 103
After Business Hours	p. 106
At Her Desk	p. 109
At the Gaslight	p. 112
The Slaughter of the Innocents, September 1963
Gloria	p. 129
Pimento Dream	p. 133
At Woolworth's	p. 139
Susan Spenser Oaks	p. 141
Kind of a Growl	p. 144
Huddled Together	p. 145
Rubble	p. 149
The Face of Christ	p. 152
Someone Small	p. 155
Homeward	p. 156
Old Aunt Charlotte	p. 158
At the Cartwrights'	p. 163
Four Lambs	p. 167
Trials	p. 170
Edmund's Memori: I Begin Work and Study	p. 172
O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, November 1963
Box of Moonlight	p. 181
How the News Came to the Joneses	p. 184
Stella's Odyssey	p. 189
Dear Self	p. 235
Lionel Parrish: Letter to the Four Families, December 1	p. 239
Edmund's Memoir: A Christmas Story in Retrospect	p. 240
The Oven, Summer 1964
New Work, New Life	p. 247
H.O.P.E.	p. 251
Driving Home	p. 255
Stella's Aunts	p. 258
Lionel's Office	p. 264
In the Oven	p. 268
Aftermath: Living It Again	p. 274
Aftermath: "Traumerei"	p. 275
Aftermath: Arcola at the Dressing Table	p. 277
Aftermath: Home for the Night	p. 278
Cahaba	p. 280
Afternoon Roses	p. 286
Night Again: Caryatid	p. 289
Humming in the Heat	p. 292
Aunt Pratt Alone	p. 296
Lee Plays Barber	p. 299
Dappled Light	p. 303
Fans for August	p. 306
View from Outside	p. 310
Four Spirits	p. 314
Lions Lounging	p. 317
An Office Call	p. 322
Picasso's Bull	p. 327
Catherine's Story: A Friend of the Body	p. 334
Seed People, September 1964
Dear Donny	p. 353
He Doesn't	p. 356
In the Basement	p. 361
Night Riders	p. 366
Resurrection	p. 373
What's the Matter?	p. 377
Answers	p. 384
Lionel Watching	p. 395
Close to Earth	p. 399
Agnes's Honeybees	p. 403
How to Dream	p. 406
Jonathan, the Pianist	p. 409
Dear Self	p. 419
Saturday Morning: Edmund	p. 423
Saturday Morning: Lee	p. 429
Saturday: Agnes	p. 434
Saturday: Lee	p. 443
Saturday: Lionel	p. 452
Saturday: Cat	p. 455
Saturday: Gloria	p. 460
Joseph Coat-of-Many-Colors	p. 467
I, Gloria	p. 473
Stella Listening	p. 476
Spirits in the Snow, January 1965
Jonathan	p. 487
New Year's Party, 1965	p. 490
Stella	p. 502
Postlude: Bringing in the Sheaves
Helicon Homecoming	p. 515
Author's Note	p. 521
Acknowledgments	p. 523
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

Four Spirits
A Novel

Chapter One

Stella

From many places in the valley that cradled birminghamyou could lift up your eyes, in 1963, to see the gigantic cast-iron statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of the forge, atop his stone pedestal. Silhouetted against the pale blue skyline, atop Red Mountain, Vulcan held up a torch in one outstretched, soaring arm. In other mountain ridges surrounding the city, the ore lay hidden, but the city had honored this outcropping of iron ore named Red Mountain, as a reminder of the source of its prosperity (such as itwas -- most of the wealth of the steel industry was exported to magnates living in the great cities of the Northeast), by raising Vulcan high above the populace, south of the city.

Fanciful and well-educated children liked to pretend that Vulcan, who looked north, had a romance with the Statue of Liberty, also made of metal. But she was the largest such statue in the world, and he was second to her, and that violated the children's sense of romance, for they understood hierarchy in romance to be as natural as hierarchy among whites and blacks.

Looking down from Vulcan -- his pedestal housed stairs, and around the top of the tower ran an observation platform -- you could see the entire city of Birmingham filling the valley between the last ridges of the Appalachian mountain chain as it stretched from high in the northeast to southwest.

In early May 1963, Stella's freckle-faced boyfriend, a scant half inch taller (but therefore presentable as a boyfriend, if she wore flats), had persuaded her to drive from their college, across the city, avoiding the areas where Negroes were congregating for demonstrations, to Red Mountain. From the observation balcony just below Vulcan's feet, Stella and Darl hoped for a safe overview.

I believe if outsiders would just stay out ... Darl had told her. Let Birmingham solve ... Don't you?

But Stella hadn't answered. Instead, she'd said, I'd like to see. I'm afraid to go close.

We can go up on Vulcan, Darl had offered, for he was a man who wanted to accommodate women; a man who loved his mother. Stella had met her. He'd brought along his bird-watching binoculars. Darl could recognize birds by their songs alone; he could imitate each sound; he kept a life list of all the birds he had ever seen. His actual name was Darling, his mother's maiden name, and though Stella dared not call him Darling, she longed to do so.

"Do you know the average altitude for the flight of robins?" he asked.

A spurt of laughter flew from between Stella's lips. She imagined the giggle as though it had heft and was falling rapidly down from the pedestal, down the mountain, into the valley.

"I don't have the foggiest idea," she said.

"About thirty inches."

"What a waste!" she said. "To have the gift of flight and to fly so low."

She thought Darl might laugh at her sentence -- half serious, half comic -- but he didn't.

Stella glanced up the massive, shining body of Vulcan, past his classical and bare heinie, up his lifted arm to his unilluminated torch. At a distance, she had often observed that the nighttime neon "flame" made the torch resemble a Popsicle. Cherry red, if someone had died in an auto accident; lime green, otherwise. Even this close and looking up his skirt, Vulcan's frontal parts were completely covered by his short blacksmith's apron.

Though it was May and the police were already into short sleeves, on the open observation balcony, Darl and Stella were lifted above the heat into a layer of air with cool breezes. Stella wished she'd worn a sweater. Darl put hisarm around her -- just for warmth, she told herself with determined naïveté, but she thrilled at his encircling arm diagonally crossing her back. His fingers fitted the spaces between her curving ribs. They were alone up in the air; they weren't some trashy couple smooching in public. Yes, this was what she had been wanting. Perhaps for years. Someone's arm around her, making her safe.

Stella knew her breasts were terribly small. If they had been plumper, Darl's fingertips might have found the beginnings of roundness. Sex, sex, sex, she thought. His hand slid down to her waist; her mind careened. Do I feel slender enough there? Inviting? With his other hand, Darl trained the binoculars on the city. With one finger, he adjusted the ridged wheel between the twin eyepieces. The black leather strap looped gracefully around the back of his neck.

Darl was the complete darling: a lover of nature, a lover of music, a lover of God, considerate, a gentleman -- if only he loved her. And best of all he was an organist, a master of the king of instruments. When Darl played Bach's "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded," creating his own improvisations, Stella felt understood. It was she who had been wounded, and the music was what she missed and needed. The way Darl played promised wholeness, profundity. Almost it seemed that the spirit of her father was hovering around Darl and her on this high place.

She placed her hand just below Darl's waist; she shivered as though to say "I only seek closeness for warmth, against the chill." Her palm loved the unfamiliar grain of the cloth of his trousers, and underneath, the firm flesh of his buttock just beginning to flare. How tantalized her hand felt, the hand itself wishing it dare move down to know the curve of his butt. She glanced again at the side of his cheek, the binoculars trained on the city. His hair was a rich brown, and his freckles almost matched his hair.

She wanted to brush the field glasses aside, to stand in front of him ...

Excerpted from Four Spirits: A Novel by Sena Jeter Naslund
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