THESE HEATHENS

A pregnant Black teenager spends a weekend in Atlanta during the thick of the Civil Rights Movement.

Doris Steele is only 17 in 1960, but she left her rural Georgia high school—and the instruction of her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas—after 10th grade to take care of her ailing mother and younger siblings. When she becomes pregnant, she finds it impossible to face a future as a mother, and she turns to Mrs. Lucas for help. Mrs. Lucas calls upon her childhood best friend, Sylvia Broussard, a wealthy and well-connected Black woman with luminaries in her orbit like Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King, and prominent figures in the arts, and a stepnephew with a key role in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. When Doris spends a weekend at the Broussard home waiting for the Atlanta doctor Sylvia has procured to perform the abortion, she’s brought into contact with people whose views on religion, segregation, class, politics and—especially—homosexuality make her question everything she’s been taught. (“I’m confused, Lord,” Doris prays. “Please help me to see your purpose for bringing me among these heathens.”) As the weekend unfolds and secrets spill out, Doris doubts that she will ever be the same again. McKenzie’s novel crackles with energy, and her depiction of Black high society during a pivotal moment in American history has depth and vivacity. Although the plot strains to place Doris in as many historical scenarios as possible over the course of a few dozen hours, à la Forrest Gump, watching Doris awaken to the wider possibilities of politics, social justice, and human experience is undeniably satisfying. As Doris says, “Here, in Atlanta, in Mrs. Broussard’s house? That God [I prayed to] seemed, not just petty, but suddenly very small.”

A prismatic rendering of the sit-in movement and its context, with memorable characters at its center.