SOURCES OF LIGHT

When 14-year-old Samantha Thomas moves to Jackson, Miss., in 1962, following her father’s death in Vietnam, she learns about love and hate all in the same year. Her mother meets Perry Walker, a photographer who teaches Sam about taking photographs and seeing the world in new ways, but what she begins seeing and pondering is the racial situation in Jackson—lunch-counter sit-ins, voter-registration protests and the violent reprisals of many in the white community, including the father of the boy she begins to like. Though this fine volume easily stands by itself, McMullan links it with two previous works—How I Found the Strong (2004) and When I Crossed No-Bob (2007)—and readers who read the first installments will feel that they are in the midst of an excellent historical saga. A pivotal scene in the Petrified Forest relies too much on coincidence and an improbable sequence of events, but overall this offers a superb portrait of a place and time and a memorable character trying to make sense of a world both ugly and beautiful. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)