Book excerpt: The year is 1963, notably the most volatile period in the civil rights movement and one of the most tragic in American history. THE BOX CIRCLE takes us from the Birmingham Campaign to the March on Washington; from the assassinations of Medgar Evers and President John F. Kennedy, the bombing of Birminghams Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and the deaths of four little girls to the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation. We watch these events unfurl through the eyes of eleven-year-old Coralee Jordan as she struggles desperately to insure the safety of those she loves by converting a cellar coal room into a nuclear fallout shelter. Her mother, Emma, lends her own voice, as does Sunny, the civil rights worker who fi ghts both the racial wars of Birmingham and his own personal battle, whether to follow in the peaceful footsteps of Martin Luther King or those of the defi ant Malcolm X. THE BOX CIRCLE carries us through the year and into the lives of these characters as they become intertwined with both the events of this historical era and with one another. Throughout, we are reminded that humankind cannot bear very much reality, as Coralee, Emma and Sunny must stand face to face with both their own personal realities and with the shared realities of all humankind. Finally, THE BOX CIRCLE is a tribute to all those men, women, and children, black and white, whose very lives made this story possible.