Bombingham. (fiction reviews).

Bombingham by Anthony Grooms The Free Press, October 2001, $24.00 ISBN 0-743-20558-8

In the war-torn rice fields of Vietnam, GI Walter Lee Burke recalls the other battlefields where his mettle was tested--the streets of Birmingham and his childhood home. As Walter struggles to write a letter to the parents of a fallen fellow soldier, he ponders the meaning of battle. As he writes, Walter recalls the moments in his life that tested his faith, with the hope of gaining some understanding. It is that challenge that is the heart of Anthony Grooms' novel Bombingham.

The book gets its title from the scornful moniker blacks gave to Birmingham in the 1950s and 1960s, when more than 20 unsolved bombings rocked the city's black community. Set in 1963, 11-year-old Walter is an industrious young boy. He and his best friend, Lamar, dream of becoming the first "Negro" astronauts.

Members of the Burke family enjoyed their middle-class comforts until they are confronted with the tragic news that their mother is dying of cancer. While things begin to unravel in the Burke home, Martin Luther King and other "race men" appear in Birmingham to protest racial inequality and violence. Walter and his younger sister, Josie, question the adult world that revolves chaotically around them. And as he witnesses the gradual deterioration of his family's spirit, he wonders about his responsibility to the social movement he believes will bring about change.

In Walter, Grooms has created a young man who questions his circumstances with both childish enthusiasm and adolescent bewilderment. The story is about having hope and faith, as young Walter contemplates, "... what to have faith in."

Grooms is a detailed writer. His descriptions of people, places and incidences are painted with just enough description to furnish them with familiarity. The language and tone of the dialogue of his characters summon the sounds of the churches, kitchens and streets they inhabit. As the story unfolds, it's as if an adult Walter is retelling the events with the voice and words and ideas that the younger Walter struggled with.

Grooms, who managed to avoid the Vietnam War, is the author of Ice Poems and Trouble No More: Stories. He is also the 1996 winner of the Lillian Smith Award for Fiction.

"Whereas much nonfiction--particularly memoir--has been written about the Civil Rights Movement, I find that little fiction is set in that period," says Grooms. "My interest in writing the novel was first to tell a good story, and, second, to contribute--through storytelling--to what is known about individual lives during this struggle."

With Bombingham, Grooms not only has a good story but brings ordinary, unheard voices at pivotal moments in history.

--Clarence V. Reynolds is a writer in Baltimore.