The Book of Marie — Terry Kay

In spring 1962, a young black girl is killed at a civil rights demonstration on a university campus in Atlanta. The next day a home in Georgia is burned. Both events are etched into the memory of Cole Bishop, eerily playing out the predictions of a former classmate named Marie Fitzpatrick.
Cole and Marie are high school seniors when they first meet in fall 1954. Cole is a native-born Southerner accepting the traditions of segregation as a way of life. Marie is a recent transplant from Washington, DC, a brilliant and assertive nonconformist with bold predictions about a new world that is about to be ushered in by the force of desegregation. The odd friendship between the two of them continues after high school in a series of tender and revealing letters.
The story revolves around the fiftieth reunion of the Overton High School class of 1955. Cole's return for the reunion reunites him with classmates who, over time, have accepted a guarded assimilation of the races.
He is also reacquainted with two black men - Moses Elder, the town's mayor, and Little John Curry, a reclusive artist who carries the scars of the burned house, and in those encounters, he understands clearly the influence of Marie on his life.
The Book of Marie is the story of a generation - whites and blacks - who ignited the war of change. Yet, it is also as much about the power of places - the finding of home - as it is about-the history of events.