Magic Time A Novel [Paperback]

Born and raised in Mississippi, Carter Ransom came to New York as a young man and has risen to become a columnist with a major city newspaper. But when his life in New York falls apart and he heads back home to recover, the still-live conflicts of his youth in the civil rights era rise up all around him again. A twenty-five-year-old murder case has just been reopened, a church bombing that killed Carter's first love. Carter's father was the judge in the case, and now there's evidence that the trial was flawed, even fixed, and the case's reopening threatens the foundation of Carter's identity, as well as his relationship to his family.

Moving between New York City and the New South of the early 1990s, with flashbacks to Mississippi's Freedom Summer of 1964,Magic Timeis at once a powerful love story, a courtroom drama, and a complex portrait of the civil rights revolution.

Doug Marlette has captured something essential about the spirit of our age. The New York Times Book Review

Glorious and deeply moving. Perfectly captures a time of epic change. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A compelling legal thriller, touching tribute, and zesty love story rolled into one. The Boston Globe

Doug Marlette unravels a powerful plot that straddles every genre, from historical fiction to love story. Daily News (New York)

Charming, engaging, and gripping . . .Magic Timepresents a realistic portrait of the collective amnesia of the South and the generational tensions that the civil rights movement stirred up, then and now. The Washington Post

A compulsively readable style and a wry sense of humor . . . There are no signs of a sophomore slump here.Magic Timeusefully reminds us of a dark moment in our nation's recent past, of what has changed and how much has not. The Star-News (Wilmington, North Carolina)

Marlette skillfully twines the raucous immediacy of tl“Y