His novel, Bombingham (2001), is set against the activism for and resistance against civil rights in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. His stories and poems have been published in Callaloo, African American Review, Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement (2006), The Civil Rights Reader (2009) and other literary journals and anthologies. Grooms is the author of a collection of poems, Ice Poems (1988) and of a collection of stories, Trouble No More (1995). A seven-city author tour will help introduce him to new readers.Anthony Grooms earned a BA in Theatre and Speech from The College of William and Mary and an MFA from George Mason University. 1)įorecast: This may be a breakout work for Grooms, an award-winning poet, essayist and short story writer. Though Walter contends that 'the world is a tumultuous place and every soul in it suffers,' Grooms confronts this suffering head-on, showing that hope and dignity sometimes can be reclaimed in the process. Whether describing the daily indignities of life under Jim Crow laws or the ignorance and brutality of the men who enforce them, Grooms writes with grace and clarity, never resorting to sentimentality or gratuitous button-pushing. Encouraged by Walter's best friend, Lamar Burrell, and Lamar's activist mother, Walter and Josie find themselves at the front lines of the struggle for civil rights, secretly attending meetings, going to demonstrations led by Martin Luther King Jr., and ultimately facing police dogs and fire hoses. Choosing religion over medicine, their mother deteriorates rapidly-both mentally and physically-and their exasperated father, a teacher and staunch advocate of 'thinking scientifically,' begins a corresponding descent into alcoholism, eventually leaving home to live in a motel. But when their mother is diagnosed with brain cancer, things begin to fall apart. (The title refers to violence surrounding the civil rights movement.) Walter's parents, who refuse to participate in boycotts and rallies, try to shield the children from the turmoil stoked by redneck police commissioner (and rumored KKK grand dragon) Bull Connor.

The bulk of the novel occurs in flashback, focusing on Walter's turbulent adolescence in Tittusville, the Birmingham suburb where he lived with his parents and younger sister, Josie. At the center of Grooms's riveting first novel is Walter Burke, a black American soldier in Vietnam who is attempting to compose a letter to the parents of one of his fallen comrades.

Bombingham by Anthony Grooms