Winner of the Hackney Literary Award and selected in 2002 by Time as one of the eleven best novels on the African American experience, The Children Bob Moses Led is a compelling, powerful chronicle of the events of Freedom Summer. The novel is narrated in alternating sections by Tom Morton, a white college student who joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for the summer, and Bob Moses, the charismatic leader of the Mississippi Summer Project. With clarity and honesty, Heath’s novel recalls the bittersweet spirit of the 1960s and conveys the hopeful idealism of the young students as they begin to understand both the harsh reality faced by those they try to help and the enormity of the oppression they must overcome.

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Praise for The Children Bob Moses Led

The Children Bob Moses Led is a fascinating story that needed to be told. The book is a fine achievement that vividly brings to life the issues and personalities of the time. I enjoyed it very much and I am sure there is a readership for it out there in the real world.    —Robert Stone, Dog Soldiers, Hall of Mirrors, Outerbridge Reach

The Children Bob Moses Led is a bold and compelling narrative. Bob Moses was the kind of leader we sadly miss today, one of quiet, yet enormous moral strength: a genuine inspiration to the sometimes confused idealism of the young volunteers in the midst of a violent and passionate struggle. Perhaps now, more than ever, we need to remember the summer of 1964. The novel is wonderfully instructive, it has a great deal of moral energy, and it tells an important story sensitively, carefully, thoughtfully.    —Robert Coles, Children of Crisis, Farewell to the South, The Call of Service

The Children Bob Moses Led is an important and timely book. The reader will experience the raw courage, the personal discipline and the reliance on transcendent values, whether philosophical or religious, that were at the basis of this period of transformation in Mississippi. I am grateful that The Children Bob Moses Led provided me with this re-introduction to an important part of my own history.    —James A. McPherson, Hue and Cry, Elbow Room

A novel that holds true to the actual heroic events of Freedom Summer, The Children Bob Moses Led is an illuminating account of a period from our history that is too little known and too little understood.    —Clayborne Carson, In Struggle

The Children Bob Moses Led is an altogether compelling read and powerful evocation of the Summer Project. William Heath has told the story with great sensitivity, admirable regard for the historical record, but most of all, consummate narrative skill. With the possible exception of Alice Walker’s Meridian, this is the very best and most moving literary treatment of the movement I have read.    —Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer

William Heath’s fine novel casts a brilliant arc of light between the past and the present. Thanks to his skill as novelist and historian, we become the grown-up children Bob Moses led, better informed, better armed, and better able to march into the interracial America of the 1990s.    —Frank Bergon, Shoshone Mike, The Temptations of Saint Ed & Brother S

Through The Children Bob Moses Led readers young and old will discover and rediscover the extent to which racial hatred permeated the very fabric of life in Mississippi. Readers will experience powerful models of leadership and learn what it means to be part of a united effort that really matters. The book provides an emotional journey through a part of our history that will leave the reader shaken but enriched.    —Dorothy Cotton (Citizenship Education Director for the SCLC during the sixties; one of Martin Luther King’s closest and most trusted advisers.)

Few events in recent history are as important and have had such impact as those Heath’s book presents, but it took a writer as talented and skillful as he is to give us their flesh and blood. The Children Bob Moses Led lives and breathes. Heath’s book is important history, but it is also art.    —Toby Olson, The Life of Jesus, Seaview

The Freedom Summer Project of 1964 comes alive in the contrasting narratives of civil rights leader Bob Moses and fictional volunteer Tom Morton. The unfathomable oppression of rural Mississippi during its black voter registration drives is depicted with faultless clarity…. First-novelist Heath presents an illuminating portrait of the time, fascinating for the smaller events he uncovers, chronicling the bravery of those who didn’t capture the national spotlight. An absorbing look at one of America’s darkest and most courageous moments.     —Kirkus

The volunteers begin to question their own motives, and their relationships grow increasingly intense as personal agendas become furiously entangled with political ones. Tom’s honest, often wry perspective reveals his fears and his determination, and his romantic involvement with one of his students—a black teenaged girl—raises ethical questions that continue to resonate. . . . The large cast of characters gives voice to the complexity of the era’s issues, and Heath’s clear chronicle of this poignant moment in our nation’s recent past is often compelling.    —Publishers Weekly

Reminiscent of All the King’s Men in its ambition and political scope, The Children Bob Moses Led is not only the first major novel to deal with the complex politics of Freedom Summer and the dissolution of the civil rights coalition, it is also one of the few novels on any subject that actually shows how people voted and what they stood for. Engaging and suspenseful, this is contemporary fiction at its best, and is sure to find its way into college courses on the ’60s and the civil rights movement.    —Dayton Daily News

It is through Morton’s eyes that we see some of the troubled aspects of SNCC: the internal struggles around race, gender, sex and power. However, the real power, according to Heath, rests with the black people from these communities. They march despite being beaten and having their homes firebombed. As narrated here, the Civil Rights Movement sounded a clarion call for all people seeking justice in America.     —Quarterly Black Review

Mention Freedom Summer these days and you’re likely to get a blank stare. Heath’s book should help remedy that. Morton himself is an engaging, intelligent character, as are those with whom he spends this hot, often frightening time: “Feelgood,” the young black man who is his boss; Esther, whom Tom lusts after but who is in love with Feelgood; and Lenny, the friend whose sarcasm is a foil for their sometimes self-righteous assertions. The author clearly knows his subject and can evoke a scene, and one is drawn into the action and compelled by the events themselves. Heath is to be commended for giving Moses and others their due. Although The Children Bob Moses Led is fiction, with a lengthy disclaimer to underscore this fact, it reads like memoir.    —Book World (The Washington Post)

Beaten, jailed and shot at, Moses witnesses the deaths of several blacks who tried to help him. Yet he perseveres, an uncommonly dedicated and intelligent man, the voice of sanity in the midst of chaos. Regarded as a saint by the people working with him, Moses feels profoundly betrayed by forces in power who had promised their help at the convention, then withheld it…. Heath captures the personal confusion, tensions and victories in his often fast-paced story.    —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

The blend of fact and fiction is so brilliantly written, the reader is completely absorbed into the unfolding drama. In a masterfully told manner, William Heath brings alive a disturbing piece of our history.    —Small Press

Based on meticulous research, Heath’s novel beautifully recreates a time of idealism and hope put to the test. Bob Moses is an unacknowledged leader for our times, whose conviction and courage vividly are portrayed in this exciting tale. In a time hungry for heroes, The Children Bob Moses Led reminds us that our recent past is full of brave men and women who truly changed the course of our history.     —Black Employment Review

The Children Bob Moses Led is a gripping novel for all age groups, from young adult readers to mature readers who may remember the summer of 1964.  For those with limited historical background, Heath provides enough context to bring them into the story and spark their curiosity.  Though a great read on its own, it is ideal for classroom use in both English and history classes, and the publisher has provided an online study guide to facilitate classroom use.    —Beverly Tomek, American Book Review
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