The white physician-in-chief of a leading university hospital in the South is wakened in the middle of the night, not by an emergency call but by sounds of men's voices outside the house where he lives with his wife and their baby. Suddenly there is heavy pounding, as by a club, on the front door, and hastening to open it, he finds himself staring at a large cross fully ablaze in the front yard, not more than a dozen feet from the house, as a car hurriedly exits the yard, tires screeching, onto the adjoining road. How matters came to this pass and what subsequent events teach him about the crucial difference between civil rights and black power -- all this and more are the stuff of "Days of Wrath and Hope," a new novel set in a city enmeshed in civil-rights struggles. Drawing on the author's knowledge of the real-life experiences of a leading figure in contemporary American healthcare, here is a novel that yields arresting insights into the nation's continuing tribulations over race.