In Four Spirits, Sena Jeter Naslund weaves together the lives of blacks and whites, racists and civil rights advocates, violent repression and peaceful protest to create an epic tapestry of American social transformation. At the heart of the novel is a sheltered young white college student, raised by genteel aunts, who first witnesses and then joins the freedom movement in the racial hotbed that was Birmingham, Alabama of the 1960s. Stella's life is forever altered by her new friendships with black women and by the dangerous conflagration engulfing everyone and everything she has known.