On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, was bombed, killing four young girls. It was clear that white supremacists were responsible. The community activists who gathered at the church had recently succeeded in desegregating Birmingham public schools, and this was an act of revenge.

The girls did not die in vain; the public outrage brought on by this senseless tragedy was crucial to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But who were the perpetrators? Alabamians would have to wait a long time to find out. Due to reluctant witnesses and racial prejudice, the FBI closed the case without any indictments.

But as Martin Luther King, Jr., famously claimed, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." When William Baxley became state attorney general years later, he reopened the case, ultimately convicting one of the bombers in 1977. Another suspect passed away in 1994, and author Doug Jones himself prosecuted and convicted the final two perpetrators - a correction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice that was nearly 40 years in the making.

Bending Toward Justice is a detailed account of this key moment in our national struggle for equality and the long road to prosecuting those responsible for the tragedy, related by an author who played a major role in the investigation. It is destined to become the next addition to our civil rights canon.