About the Book
The names Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery may not be well known, but the image of them from September 1957 surely is: a black high school girl, dressed in white, walking stoically in front of Little Rock Central High School, and a white girl standing directly behind her, face twisted in hate, screaming racial epithets. This famous photograph captures the full anguish of desegregation--in Little Rock and throughout the South--and an epic moment in the civil rights movement. In this gripping book, David Margolick tells the remarkable story of two separate lives unexpectedly braided together. He explores how the haunting picture of Elizabeth and Hazel came to be taken, its significance in the wider world, and why, for the next half-century, neither woman has ever escaped from its long shadow. He recounts Elizabeth's struggle to overcome the trauma of her hate-filled school experience, and Hazel's long efforts to atone for a fateful, horrible mistake. The book follows the painful journey of the two as they progress from apology to forgiveness to reconciliation and, amazingly, to friendship. This friendship foundered, then collapsed--perhaps inevitably--over the same fissures and misunderstandings that continue to permeate American race relations more than half a century after the unforgettable photograph at Little Rock. And yet, as Margolick explains, a bond between Elizabeth and Hazel, silent but complex, endures.
About the Author :
David Margolick is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review.
Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor, recording artist, poet, and spoken-word performer who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook Many Things Invisible. In addition to her narration work, she has released an album of original songs entitled Only an Angel. She has recited and performed her poetry at venues ranging from L.A. coffeehouses to the museums and poetry festivals of the Northwest. She served for several years as poetry editor of the literary journal Square Lake, where she enjoyed discovering and publishing unknown writers alongside of literary notables. Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor, recording artist, poet, and spoken-word performer who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook Many Things Invisible. In addition to her narration work, she has released an album of original songs entitled Only an Angel. She has recited and performed her poetry at venues ranging from L.A. coffeehouses to the museums and poetry festivals of the Northwest. She served for several years as poetry editor of the literary journal Square Lake, where she enjoyed discovering and publishing unknown writers alongside of literary notables.
Review :
Margolick's book becomes utterly engrossing, for it touches on a variety of thorny, provocative themes: the power of race, the nature of friendship, the role of personality, the capacity for brutality and for forgiveness.-- "Publishers Weekly"
"A patient and evenhanded account of their messy relationship over the decades...Margolick proposes no fairy-tale resolutions to such moral impasses. To his credit, he spares us none of the unruly facts as his subjects, still wrestling with history, wander off message."
-- "New York Times Book Review"
"Intricately woven and deeply affecting...[Margolick's] choice to broaden and complicate the narrative - to include the larger minefield of race matters and honest discourse - is what makes this book salient, not sentimental. Elizabeth and Hazel's winding, rocky relationship, then, is a much more fitting and accurate metaphor for the country; this book, an attempt at a different, lasting after-image--this time in words."
-- "Los Angeles Times"
"Surprising, disturbing, occasionally inspiring, often baffling, and ultimately sad...Elizabeth and Hazel represents, in microcosm, the debilitating power of race that remains powerful 50 years after that photo...An amazing story, told with brio."
-- "Boston Globe"
"The iconic image of Elizabeth and Hazel at age fifteen showed us the terrible burden that nine young Americans had to shoulder to claim our nation's promise of equal opportunity. The pain it caused was deeply personal. David Margolick now tells us the amazing story of how Elizabeth and Hazel, as adults, struggled to find each other across the racial divide and in so doing, end their pain and find a measure of peace. We all need to know about Elizabeth and Hazel."
-- "Former President Bill Clinton"
For Elizabeth and Hazel, "it would have been simple enough to turn their stories into a 'where are they now' piece. But Margolick is after something bigger. Through Eckford and Bryan's tangled lives, he hopes to capture the complexity of race, forgiveness, and reconciliation in modern America."
-- "Washington Post"
