The Last Days

the long version

"Laurel, Mississippi, was a bustling and prosperous, largely middle- and upper-middle-class town full of sophisticated people who traveled, loved the arts, and sent their children to Vanderbilt and Tulane. As minister of the First Baptist Church in Laurel, Bob Marsh, the author's father, was a respected and beloved man in the community. Laurel was also the home base of Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Mississippi KKK, who commanded a daily and unchallenged program of terror and misery. Bowers was suspected of orchestrating at least nine murders, including those of Vernon Dahmer, Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman: 75 bombings of black churches; and many other beatings and assaults. In this real-life To Kill a Mockingbird, Marsh gives us a small town Southern drama of a father grappling with his moral indecision while trying to teach his family the meaning and practice of Christian purity. Yet Marsh's father was no Atticus Finch, willing and able to transform a town's racism through the sheer, silent force of his unshakeable resolve. Bob Marsh was a Southern Baptist preacher who struggled to do the right thing, reeled between righteous indignation and moral torpor, and eventually found the courage to take a public stand against Bowers."--BOOK JACKET.