Critical Praise

“In Magic Time, Doug Marlette does with words what we are used to seeing him do so masterfully with pictures: he sets us down firmly in a sharply drawn time and place and tells us a great story. Magic Time proves that The Bridge was no fluke: Marlette is a great writer of Southern fiction, and he understands that region as it was in the turbulent days of the Civil Rights Movement, and as it has reshaped itself since.”

——Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

“Magic Time is a beautiful memorial to the brave young people who made the ultimate sacrifice in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Doug Marlette has vividly captured the spirit of history that animated those of us who were part of that extraordinary time.”

——John Lewis, U.S. House of Representatives

“I have always loved that word ‘page-turner,’ and that is just what Doug Marlette has given us with Magic Time. He bridges the modern South to one of its bleakest, most violent periods and does so with a story that you can’t put down. I love the way Marlette brings my South to life with all its glory and warts. With this book, with the dilemma that modern-day Southerners find themselves in because of their ancestors’ actions, we see once again what Faulkner meant about how the past isn’t dead, or even past.”

——Rick Bragg, author of All Over but the Shoutin’ and Ava’s Man

“As in The Bridge, Doug Marlette asks urgent questions about society and directs us to look for the answers within our own hearts. His kind intelligence shows through in every word. He’s one of my favorite writers.”

——Kaye Gibbons, author of Ellen Foster and The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster

“Perfectly captures a time of epic change. An exceptional work of Southern fiction.”

——Kirkus  (starred review)