"Among the virtues of this clear, luminous novel is its ability to present tumultuous historical events through the eyes and dawning sensibility of an intelligent young girl...infused with the rhythms and customs of its Southern setting, but no matter where you're from, you can enjoy it.." (Read full review here)
--Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
"McMullan's book has become a way for teachers to talk with students about the civil rights movement and about race.." (Read full review here)
--Jerry Mitchell, Clarion Ledger, Jackson, MS
"This book was absolutely perfect. From the bomb shelter that Mary Alice's family constructed to the Tang served at breakfast, to the space race, and mention of Kennedy's worries over Castro, Sources of Light is a flashback of America in 1962. McMullan captures what life in Jackson was like in the 60s and the small ways in which ordinary people helped create change.." (Read full review here)
--Tina, Books-Are-My-Thing
"It's a high stakes novel that powerfully portrays the bravery and loss of a tumultuous time." (Read full review here)
--Publisher's Weekly
"No one is demonized in this novel. McMullan, a Mississippi native, makes her characters complex, confused, and sympathetic...In the end, readers will see the humanity of those on the wrong side of history, and may even feel compassion for them, too." (Read full review here)
--Booklist
"Make room on your library shelves for this one." (Starred Review) (Read full review here)
--School Library Journal
"A regular girl with bold ideas, Sam realizes that like her father, she is caught in the crossfire of war--and she wonders if she will come out a hero, too. Her keen observations on both adolescence and the racial divide will teach readers about the Civil Rights Movement and growing up in the early 1960s. Using photography as a metaphor, McMullan shows how Sam looks for the sources of light and good amidst the hatred that surrounds her. Inserting elements of her own childhood and even alluding to her previous Reconstruction novel When I Crossed No-Bob, she seamlessly blends fact and fiction and portrays this turbulent time in American history with candor and grace." (Read full review here)
--BookPage
"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...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."
--Kirkus Reviews
Nominated for The National Book Award, Young Adult Fiction Division
An Indie Bound Children's Book for Summer 2010
The Indie Next List: The "next great read" the "next best seller"
A Teen Book Selection for Dozens of Reading Programs Including:
- The Chicago Public Library
- Evansville, Indiana's One Book/One Community
- Columbus, Ohio Public Library
- Ohio University Library
Evansville, Indiana's 2010 One Book/One Community Youth Selection
It's 1962, a year after the death of Sam's father--he was a war hero--and Sam and her mother must move, along with their very liberal views, to Jackson, Mississippi, her father's conservative hometown. Needless to say, they don't quite fit in.
People like the McLemores fear that Sam, her mother, and her mother's artist friend, Perry, are in the South to "agitate" and to shake up the dividing lines between black and white and blur it all to grey. As racial injustices ensue--sit-ins and run-ins with secret white supremacists--Sam learns to focus with her camera lens to bring forth the social injustice out of the darkness and into the light.
