Seven tales of crisscrossing and intertwining lives in Louisiana during the civil rights era. From the shadows of its aftertime, memory ensouls the figures in an artist’s paintings and brightens the wraiths of a woman’s long-ago ebullient companions. In the wake of the assassination, a disabled man broods over his failing marriage, a school teacher prepares for a party, a lawyer relives the loss of his wife, a black woman mourns President Kennedy’s death. During Freedom Summer, a family leaves Louisiana and its spirit pursues them. An Afterword honors Proust’s belief that an artist’s work should create its own Posterity.
