Bombingham

How many of us remember the burning of homes and black businesses and the bombing of a church where four little girls were sitting in Sunday School? In Anthony Grooms' touching, poignant novel, Bombingham, you will travel back in time and be reminded, if you are old enough, and introduced if you were not, to that turbulent time of unrest in U.S. history. Bombingham became synonymous for Birmingham, Alabama because of the bombings of Negro homes and businesses was such common occurrences.Fast forward to the Viet Nam War where Walter Burke finds himself with the dreaded task of writing to the parents of one of his fallen war comrades. How do you write a letter to the parents of a dead soldier? Haywood was a country boy from rural Alabama and was in awe of the fact that Walter was from Birmingham, the big city, where the civil rights struggle was prominent. Walter attempts to write this letter to make Haywood's parents understand why he was unable to discuss that dark, ominous period over several months that changed his life forever.The story is told in first person from Walter as an eleven year-old boy from a solid middle class family in Birmingham. His father is a high school science teacher and mother a secretary for a wealthy black businessman. They were the kind of family we see on a funeral home fan; handsome father, pretty mother, young well-groomed boy and little sister with perfectly braided hair. They don't raise their voices, are nice people and a credit to the Negro race. But the pretty picture is shattered within a few months when a series of tragic events occur, events that mark the end of Walter's childhood innocence and existence. He and his best friend, Lamar, a boy from the projects, are a pair of kids who ride their bicycles and have a paper route. Their dreams are to be astronauts; they cling to this hope though they realize that as Negroes, the chances are near impossible. Nevertheless they pursue their endeavors by collecting and dissecting specimens. Lamar is a daring kid and one day he talks Walter and his sister, Josie into trespassing in the Whites only park where they are caught and severely reprimanded by a White man. Meanwhile the civil rights movement has come to Birmingham full force and the children are pulled into it. Many of the Negro adults are fearful of the movement, some because of the fear of losing their government and teaching positions as well as domestic jobs, and many because they view the civil rights movement as something done by those "troublemakers". Walter's parents fall into both categories as many Negroes do, who feared for their lives standing up for basic human rights. Because many of the parents could not or would not join the marches and sit-ins, the children did so, embracing the charge with enthusiasm and fervor. When Walter's mother becomes seriously ill, the family falls apart leaving in its wake alcoholism, abuse, and destroyed dreams that continued to haunt him as an adult. The notion that

This truly is a book about metaphorical bombs...the bombs that explode only after a long, slow fuse becomes too short to measure; the land mines that can surprise you for the last time, at any moment; the bombs that are dropped in your lap when you least expect it; the time bombs that may never explode but are always hovering in your thoughtsAnthony Grooms takes us on a trip that, to me, a resident of Birmingham, Alabama, feels all too genuine, all too familiar. The landmarks and neighborhoods and icons of this Southern city are present everywhere in the book. If you're ever sat in a pew at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, if you've ever seen a trained-to-attack police dog unleashed, if you've ever walked down Fourth Avenue North on a warm Saturday afternoon, if you've ever wanted to climb to the top of the iron statue Vulcan, this book will take you back in time, to the height of the Civil Rights Wars.The story demonstrates that, back then, you did not have to be a "race man" to get blown up: "You just had to be colored." And it is full of concrete--and revelatory--images: "Lamar raised the improbable idea that wet white people smelled like wet dogs. This was just one of a slew of reports about white people that filtered down to us from adults...white people never washed their hands...they kissed their dogs on the mouths...they ate fried chicken with knives and forks."I invite you to feel this book. It will make your mind turn over once or twice, and hopefully land jelly-side-up.--excerpted from a more extensive review appearing in the Spring 2002 issue of FIRST DRAFT MAGAZINE (writersforum.org) by Jim Reed, author of DAD'S TWEED COAT: SMALL WISDOMS HIDDEN COMFORTS UNEXPECTED JOYS (jimreedbooks.com)

I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Honestly, Bombingham was a book club selection for me, so I had no choice in reading it! Initially I thought I would have a difficult time getting into the Vietnam sub-plot narrated by a male protagonist, but once I got started, I couldn't stop! It offered a viewpint often overlooked in media; the fact that the same black men who were sent to fight in Vietnam were coming from the ugly heart of Jim Crow, segregation, and an America bent on oppression. How difficult (impossible) it must have been to fight for a country that didn't fight for you...I loved the depth of the characters, especially the family dynamics. For every action there is a catalyst, and the reader was presented with the opportunity to see the story from all perspectives.Wonderful book!

Walter Burke is a soldier in Vietnam and has just witnessed the death of his buddy Haywood. He's made a promise to Haywood that if he died he would send a letter to his parents explaining the circumstances. In contemplation of the letter Walter recounts his childhood in the sixties. He lived in the hotbed of the civil right movement a neighborhood called Titusville near Birmingham, otherwise known as Bombingham.Walter his family, sister Josie, mother Clara and father Carl are living a nice enough suburban life. His father a teacher and "scientist" his mother a secretary. The family lives as normal a life as one can in this segregated city and they steer clear of clear of "the agitators" and live their lives, working, going to school and for Walter hanging out with his best friend Lamar. They are soon however pulled in to the movement by an event that changes the family forever. As Walter watches his family break apart at the seams, he, Josie and Lamar, all children are drawn into the movement because they "had to" be a part of it.In Bombingham, Grooms tells an amazing story of the civil rights movement through the eyes of a child, Walter. Bombingham is a story of loss, of faith and of fear and is gripping all the way through. Though fictional, the child's perspective shines a new light on how the struggle for civil rights affected blacks at the most intimate of levels, in their very homes, in their very families.

In this gripping and perceptive novel, a young soldier named Walter Burke tries to find meaning in the senseless death of a buddy in Vietnam. His search takes him back to boyhood memories of another period of senseless death-the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's in Birmingham. Like the city, Walter's family is in the midst of crisis-his mother passively lives out the final days of brain cancer, while his father struggles with alcohol and responsibility. In his Civil Rights overview, Grooms revisits the to-be-or-not-to-be question that energized his fine 1995 collection of stories, "Trouble No More." What does it take to make us give up security and comfort to take action against injustice? But he overlays this theme with an even more dominant one-that of free will and predestination. Walter's mother, unwilling to allow surgery for her cancer, seems to place her fate solely in the Will of God, which in this novel often seems more like the Whim of God. Walter's father urges his wife to take action, but he seems to have little taste for it himself. It is up to the children-Walter, his best friend, and his precocious little sister-to take their fate into their own hands in the violent Civil Rights marches. Within this dramatic framework, Grooms demonstrates again his powerful storytelling ability. His dialogue is unerringly true, his characters complex and conflicted. He has a remarkable knack of illustrating special characteristics of African-American life in entertaining stories that have universal meaning. In "Bombingham," he has written an important novel about a critical period in American history, but it is also an important novel about questions we all face every day.