Standing Tall

In 1978, strong-willed yet idiosyncratic Steve Wiggins follows his father’s military footsteps and enrolls in South Carolina Military Academy, a bastion of Southern principles and severe discipline. The academy only recently allowed black cadets to attend and is in the early stages of a policy enforcement against the upperclassmen’s notorious hazing. The students whisper about Steve when he passes, and their words follow him like shadows of the palmetto trees swaying in the breeze.

In Charle...