This is the story of a young, white girl living with her mother in Mississippi, in 1962, as the civil rights movement gains steam. Sam, as she is called, uses photography to make sense of life and the turmoil around her. Author’s Note.

Set in 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi, this is a well-written young-adult historical novel about one girl’s experience of the American civil rights movement. The story focuses on Samantha “Sam” Thomas, a high-school freshman whose Mississippi-born father died the previous year in Vietnam when his military helicopter was shot down. Sam has moved to the South from Pittsburgh with her unconventional and outspoken mother, who has just landed a job as an art history professor at a small all-white college. Mother and daughter remain in close contact with Sam’s dad’s family, who live in Franklin, not far from Jackson. They enjoy a particularly close relationship with Sam’s wise and supportive grandmother, Thelma Addy.

Initially, all Sam wants to do is fit in at her new school. This is hard to manage when you still wear your cousin’s hand-me-downs and when you’ve been raised with a set of values about race and women’s roles that don’t match those of your very conservative classmates and their parents. One route to acceptance is to cozy up to the pretty, popular, queen bee, Mary Alice McLemore, even if she’s a repugnant airhead. If she’s got a handsome and chivalrous older brother, Stone, who happens to like you, though, you might be motivated to put your distaste aside for a while..

Sam’s mother becomes romantically involved with an appealing young photography instructor, Perry Walker, who also works at the college and who has begun to make a name for himself. Some of his Korean War photography and his images highlighting racial injustice have made it into Life Magazine, and a publisher is interested in producing a book of his critically acclaimed photos. Even Sam, who’s initially wary of him, falls under Perry’s spell. He gives her one of his cameras, shows her how to use it, and teaches her how to develop the pictures she’s snapped. Sam produces what is probably the most unusual State-of-Mississippi project submission her small-minded teacher has ever seen.

Perry is an activist dedicated to voter registration of African Americans. His main role is to create a photographic record of demonstrations, which are regularly met with anger and violence from stick-and billy-club-carrying white men. Under Perry’s tutelage, Sam is soon taking her own photos of the racial injustice around her. After her mother dares to give a lecture to students at a local all-black college, making the front page of the local newspaper for doing so, the Thomases’ home is vandalized. Sam snaps pictures of the fallout. A trip downtown with their African-American housekeeper provides a further opportunity for Sam to create her own record of Jackson’s racial turbulence. It’s a real wake-up call for the girl to learn that while she might be able to buy a Coke for Willa Mae at the drugstore, the black woman won’t be allowed to drink it indoors with Sam. A lunch counter sit-in occurs that same day, and Sam takes multiple photos of the mob violence that ensues. The hatred she sees on the faces of the whites shocks her.

Stone and Mary Alice McLemore’s affluent parents extend gracious Southern hospitality to Sam and her mother. It’s hard for the girl to reconcile their seeming generosity and kindness with Mr. McLemore’s prominent role in a citizens’ group that is committed to maintaining the status quo and fiercely opposed to racial integration and basic human rights for blacks. As evidence surfaces that Mr. McLemore engages in violent acts against both black and white activists, Sam struggles even more with her feelings towards the McLemore’s son. However, her greatest test comes when Perry is brutally attacked and hospitalized. He dies of his injuries, but Sam—in a coincidence I did not have to strain too much to accept—finds his camera in the place where he was savaged. Perry’s last act had been to create a visual record of the violence against him and those who perpetrated it. What Sam discovers when she develops Perry’s last roll of film leads to the arrest of Mr. McLemore. Stone himself is involved in turning his father in to police.

Margaret McMullan has taken some liberties with the civil rights timeline. She’s included a few well-known events that actually occurred a full year after the time in which her novel is set. One of these events is the death of a 13-year-old black boy,Virgil Ware, who was shot in the chest and face while riding on the handlebars of his brother's bicycle. His shooter was a 16-year-old white teenager. The other incident is Mayor Bull Connor’s infamous direction to local police to use force—including fire hoses, clubs, and dogs—on young civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama. Why the author has been loose with dates isn’t clear to me. It seems she wanted to have some key events of John F. Kennedy’s presidency—his commitment to space exploration and his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in particular—jostle against the South’s growing racial turmoil. I’m not convinced that the novel really demanded this sacrifice of historical accuracy. That criticism aside, Sources of Light is a fine book with a credible, relatable protagonist. It’s a novel that raises important issues that are still pertinent to young adults. I think McMullan, herself a native of Mississippi, was pretty brave to even write it. ( )

I picked this up because a friend had read & liked it and because it would augment the senior civil rights curriculum. While the writing is plain and direct, the story of 14-year-old Samantha and her mother who move to Jackson, Mississippi after her father's death in Vietnam in 1962 is engaging, if a bit flawed.

Sam's mother is a college art history professor whose professional dress & work set her & her daughter apart from the neighboring matching mother-daughter sets of belles. Although initially suspicious of her mother's new beau, Margaret warms up to him after he teaches her about photography. Through her relationships with school pals and a boyfriend, her mother & her boyfriend in a place where there is segregation, fear, and violence, Sam, of course, develops her photographs and her conscience.

Photos play a pivotal part in the resolution of a murder and the author weaves the photography motif in more-or-less effectively throughout the novel. There are also plenty of clunky, heavy-handed morals that clang through the text: "I was ready to be mad at the whole state of Mississippi, but then out of nowhere I looked up the road, then up at the sky, and thought, Thank you. Without all the bad, I wouldn't recognize the good." Also, the characters are sometimes thin devices to serve the plot, so their deaths and departures lack depth and feeling. Nonetheless, the desire to learn the truth about Sam's belief in the place and her experiences there kept me reading.

I'll be interested to see what my Senior readers think of it. ( )

I picked this up because a friend had read & liked it and because it would augment the senior civil rights curriculum. While the writing is plain and direct, the story of 14-year-old Samantha and her mother who move to Jackson, Mississippi after her father's death in Vietnam in 1962 is engaging, if a bit flawed.

Sam's mother is a college art history professor whose professional dress & work set her & her daughter apart from the neighboring matching mother-daughter sets of belles. Although initially suspicious of her mother's new beau, Margaret warms up to him after he teaches her about photography. Through her relationships with school pals and a boyfriend, her mother & her boyfriend in a place where there is segregation, fear, and violence, Sam, of course, develops her photographs and her conscience.

Photos play a pivotal part in the resolution of a murder and the author weaves the photography motif in more-or-less effectively throughout the novel. There are also plenty of clunky, heavy-handed morals that clang through the text: "I was ready to be mad at the whole state of Mississippi, but then out of nowhere I looked up the road, then up at the sky, and thought, Thank you. Without all the bad, I wouldn't recognize the good." Also, the characters are sometimes thin devices to serve the plot, so their deaths and departures lack depth and feeling. Nonetheless, the desire to learn the truth about Sam's belief in the place and her experiences there kept me reading.

I'll be interested to see what my Senior readers think of it. ( )

This story had a lot of potential. But it was such a jumbled mess that I felt I couldn't give it more than two stars. The narration jumped around in an illogical way, and aside from Sam, the other characters were far too under-developed. In the hands of a master storyteller, this book would have been great. As is, it's pretty lousy. ( )