The Children Bob Moses Led: A Novel of Freedom Summer - Paperback

by William Heath (Author)

Winner of the Hackney Literary Award and selected in 2002 by Time as one of the eleven best novels on the African American experience, The Children Bob Moses Led is a compelling, powerful chronicle of the events of Freedom Summer. The novel is narrated in alternating sections by Tom Morton, a white college student who joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for the summer, and Bob Moses, the charismatic leader of the Mississippi Summer Project. With clarity and honesty, Heath's novel recalls the bittersweet spirit of the 1960s and conveys the hopeful idealism of the young students as they begin to understand both the harsh reality faced by those they try to help and the enormity of the oppression they must overcome.

Back Jacket

During "Freedom Summer" 1964, white college students from the North traveled to Mississippi to help with voter registration, living with black families and taking orders from battle-tested "field secretaries" of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Their story - one of personal conflict, confrontational politics, communal living, interracial sex, and idealism put to the test of violent opposition - changed America forever. The Children Bob Moses Led blends fiction and fact to recreate the year between the "I-have-a-dream-we-shall-overcome" optimism of the March on Washington and the debacle of the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. The alternating voices of Bob Moses, the charismatic and enigmatic leader of the Mississippi Summer Project, and Tom Morton, a fictional white college student who has volunteered to teach in a Freedom School and to help register black voters, shape this vibrant novel and give insight into the private lives and public events that brought blacks and whites together and turned idealism into reality.

Author Biography

WILLIAM HEATH has a PhD in American studies from Case Western Reserve University and has taught at Kenyon, Transylvania, Vassar, and the University of Seville. In 2007 he retired as a professor emeritus at Mount Saint Mary's University, where The William Heath Award in creative writing is given annually. The Children Bob Moses Led (Milkweed Editions 1995) won the Hackney Literary Award for best novel, was nominated by the publisher for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize, and nominated by Joyce Carol Oates for the Ainsfield-Wolf Award. In 2002 Time magazine online judged it one of the eleven best novels of the African American experience. Blacksnake's Path: The True Adventures of William Wells (Heritage Books, 2008) was a History Book Club selection. Devil Dancer (Somondoco Press 2013) is a neo-noir novel set in Lexington, Kentucky. A work of history, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest, will be published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2015. The Walking Man (Icarcus Books 1994) is a selection of his poems. He has published essays on Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, William Styron, and Thomas Berger, among others. He and his wife Roser Caminals-Heath, a Catalan novelist, have lived in Frederick, Maryland since 1981. A study guide for The Children Bob Moses Led is available at newsouthbooks.com/bobmoses/bob_moses_study_guide.pdf.