About this Book

An exploration of prejudice and what enables and disables change, set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1964, from the perspectives of a 12-year-old white girl, a young black woman who has left Mississippi for Chicago, and a Freedom Summer volunteer from New York City. As lives collide, each questions what freedom means and the price they'll pay to have it. ******* To Joan Barnes, twelve years old in the summer of 1964, freedom is her birthright. As for Mississippi's Negroes, like C.J., who works for Joan's family until she leaves for Chicago, freedom was settled by the Civil War, wasn't it? Negroes are no longer slaves. As the child of upper-middle-class Yankee Catholics living in predominantly Baptist Mississippi, where family roots are as deep as those of the towering loblolly pines, Joan simply wants to belong. This need repeatedly puts her at odds with what she knows to be right. And it will take her years to understand that freedom means choices. To C.J. Evans, born to a life of cleaning white folks' houses, freedom is the size of a human heart, never bigger or smaller. It comes from within and can't be given or taken away. And, as her waiting-on-heaven Baptist preacher and white-controlled schools have taught her, freedom takes a back seat to staying safe--whether she's working as a maid in her Jim Crow Mississippi or as a live-in domestic in Chicago, where the rules are far more subtle. To Zach Bernstein, Jewish University of Chicago law student, freedom is an ever-expanding circle, like a balloon that can be blown up bigger and bigger without bursting. It's in the songs the summer volunteers sing to ward off the fear that they, too, will end up like James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, missing since June 21 and presumed dead. It's in Zach's faith and commitment to tzedakah--justice and righteousness. It's why he has come to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 to teach at the Meridian Freedom School. ***** As America prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer--a voter registration drive, but also an historic venture into social justice education--the moment is ripe for the retrospection offered in THE FOG MACHINE. Readers will find familiar history, such as the 1955 murder of Emmett Till by the Klan for whistling at a white woman and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, alongside depictions of the less familiar, including the Great Migration, Claudette Colvin as the first black to be arrested in Montgomery for refusing to give up her bus seat, and the role of northern women during Freedom Summer via "Wednesdays in Mississippi." It is history made all the more poignant as the novel's characters relive the June 21, 1964 disappearance of rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner and Pete Seeger's announcement during an August 4 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party gathering that their bodies had been discovered. By exploring the age-old problem of prejudice and offering a shared language for talking about civil rights history and race, THE FOG MACHINE is particularly suited to book groups, diversity forums, community reads, high schools, and colleges. Reader benefits include: 1. Ideal for book groups "THE FOG MACHINE should be read, heard, and shared," says Jackie Roberts, Seattle's The BookClub. 2. Adult fiction with crossover to young adult "Something different and quite special, with so much to offer YA readers," says Shea Peeples, Teen Librarian, Wescott Library, Eagan, MN. 3. A powerful resource for teachers "History through relationships--the way young adults learn best," says Vickie Malone, McComb High social studies teacher. 4. In time for the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, shines a spotlight on the summer that changed America "Impeccably researched, including details left out of many history books," says Debbie Z. Harwell, WEDNESDAYS IN MISSISSIPPI: PROPER LADIES WORKING FOR RADICAL C