Saturday, May 17, 2014

The Secret of Magic




THE SECRET OF MAGIC is a great read ... Interesting historical fiction about a young, Black, female civil rights attorney Regina Robichard sent by Thurgood Marshall to investigate the apparent murder of an African-American soldier in Mississippi at the end of WWII. Her perspective ( Regina's mother is a fierce and tragic heroine who speaks out after her husband is lynched by a mob) as she travels to the Jim Crow south, meets the soldier's father, and the famous white author (think Harper Lee) who has alerted the NAACP to the unfolding miscarriage of justice. 

In a time of racially motivated killings, landed white gentry with a zeal to retain the "old South,"  and a Mississippi town hiding dark truths, Regina is drawn into a worlds she has never known, having been raised above the Mason-Dixon line. 

Getting to know her favorite children's author (whose book has been banned in the State) proves a real eye opener for the attorney. Things are never as they seem, in either the author's book nor in her plea to Thurgood Marshall. Behind every story is another tale waiting to be told about growing up and leaving childhood  behind when there was a time that black and white kids didn't see color - only a friend.