About the Author

Anthony Grooms was educated at the College of William and Mary and at George Mason University. He is the author of Ice Poems and Trouble No More: Stories and is the winner of the 1996 Lillian Smith Award. As a writer, teacher, and arts administrator, he has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs. He is currently the professor of creative writing at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, and lives in Atlanta with his wife, Pamela B. Jackson.

Reviews

“Grooms reimagines one of the most shattering episodes in American history, the infamous 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.”
—Essence

“Bombingham is a considerable achievement . . . [that marks] the emergence of a brave and promising talent.”
—The Washington Post

“Too many of our younger generation know nothing about the struggle, the sacrifices, the dying of our people during those demonstrations of the fifties and the sixties. And older people too should be reminded, so that they’ll never forget. . . . [Bombingham] is about a subject and a time we should never forget.”
—ERNEST GAINES
Author of A Lesson Before Dying

Adult/High School-Walter Burke, a foot soldier serving in Vietnam, is trying to write a letter to the family of a friend who has been killed, but he can't find the right words. Memories triggered, he veers from the horrors of the present to those of his past as a black child in Alabama at the dawn of the civil rights movement. All mental paths lead to an examination of violence (sometimes graphically portrayed). Though the narrative returns to Vietnam periodically, this is chiefly the story of a period in Walter's childhood in Birmingham, whose black residents have dubbed "Bombingham" in recognition of the KKK's preferred method of attack there. Walter may be seeing an epic struggle, but he is young and his view is artless: he simply notes that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "spoke encouragingly" to the crowd; and when he sees Dr. Abernathy arrested, he is most troubled by the lack of respect shown the man. His worldview is dominated by his family life; that, too, is in crisis, and his best friend leads him into every sort of trouble, including dangerous encounters with police at demonstrations. Some readers will be frustrated by the novel's slow accretion of detail and meandering plot, but those who can adjust to the pace of the protagonist's thoughtful inner life will come to know and like him, and have a vivid and memorable experience of his world.-Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Poet and short-story writer Grooms (Trouble No More) has written a moving novel about the destruction of hope. Narrator Walter recalls being swept up with his sister in the Civil Rights marches in Birmingham at a time when their mother lay dying of cancer and their father drifted into alcoholism. As Walter awakened to the hopes and dreams of freedom through the teachings of the Civil Rights leaders, his own ability to dream and hope withered with the physical death of his mother and the spiritual death of his father. Walter looks back on this period of his life from the midst of the carnage of the Vietnam War, in which he is both victim and perpetrator. Although apparently callous to the deaths surrounding him, he is troubled by his lack of emotions. Retracing his past offers no answers and no healing. Grooms provides a vivid picture of the heady and confusing days of the fight for civil rights in Birmingham, the historical conditions of racism accompanied by arbitrary death and violence, and a young boy spiritually wounded by social injustice, violence, and the disintegration of his family. Highly recommended for all libraries.Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

"Grooms reimagines one of the most shattering episodes in American history, the infamous 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church."
-Essence

"Bombingham is a considerable achievement . . . [that marks] the emergence of a brave and promising talent."
-The Washington Post

"Too many of our younger generation know nothing about the struggle, the sacrifices, the dying of our people during those demonstrations of the fifties and the sixties. And older people too should be reminded, so that they'll never forget. . . . [Bombingham] is about a subject and a time we should never forget."
-ERNEST GAINES
Author of A Lesson Before Dying