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A review by kleonard
One Night in Georgia by Celeste O. Norfleet
3.0
I have very mixed feelings about this book. In 1968, three college women and an initially-unwanted college man decide to drive back to school from New York. Naive Veronica, whose father is forcing her to marry against her will for business reasons, takes her brand new, bright red Ford Fairlane convertible and packs it with her friends Daphne--a fragile flower--and Zelda, the novel's protagonist and a putative lawyer for civil rights. Daniel, attending college near the women, goes along to ostensibly protect them. But this isn't a simple road trip, because driving through the South in 1968 while black is incredibly dangerous, and Zelda, Daphne, and Veronica are headed to Spelman College, and Daniel attends Morehouse University. Passing through sundown towns and dealing with racist and brutal cops, gas station attendants, restaurants, and more--and encountering a few decent white and black people along the way--Zelda and Daniel fall in love, Veronica and Daphne realize the importance of Zelda's work in civil rights, and things go wrong and stay that way when the group is involved in the shooting of a white man.
On the one hand, this novel does an excellent job of illustrating just how dangerous it was--and often still is--to be black in the American South, On the other, the characters in this novel make such unbelievably foolish choices and do such vacuous things that I wanted to yell at them all. The story is a tragedy, and one based in racism, but the author could have written the same tragedy without having made the women all be so dismissive or ignorant of their surroundings.
On the one hand, this novel does an excellent job of illustrating just how dangerous it was--and often still is--to be black in the American South, On the other, the characters in this novel make such unbelievably foolish choices and do such vacuous things that I wanted to yell at them all. The story is a tragedy, and one based in racism, but the author could have written the same tragedy without having made the women all be so dismissive or ignorant of their surroundings.