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Standing and Waiting covers events that sweep from the mid-Fifties until the early Nineties. Mark Atwood is the only son of an accountant / insurance salesman, Chris Atwood, and part-time secretary / homemaker, Mira Carson Atwood, who live in Whitley, Tennessee. Events of a tragic past are recounted by Mira to Mark. Chris and Mira's lives become wound around several figures of a local Baptist church that they have joined: Brother Bob Clark, the dogmatic pastor of the church, and the imposing chair of the deacons at the church, Hamilton Wallace Stewart, known as "Ham." Chris becomes embroiled in several conflicts between the pastor and Ham on various church issues. The events rise to a climactic occurrence--a Wednesday evening prayer and business meeting in which a power play occurs in the leadership of the church. Afterward, a car accident changes the lives of the characters. Years later, in a story recounted by Mark to Mira, Mark finishes his doctorate in literature and accepts his first teaching job at Andrew Jackson University. Mark clashes with students and administrators and is eventually dismissed from the university. He also romances and secretly marries a beautiful, African-American biology professor, Eva Garden, whose destiny become entwined with and separated from his. The novel covers such controversies as abuses of religious and academic leadership and the shadowy intolerance of inter-racial marriage. Issues and themes surrounding these controversies are explored with colorings of event, character, setting, and symbol that make the novel a panoply of people and culture in the modern South.
