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 A Trial in Summer
Ann L. McLaughlin
ISBN 978-1-56474-496-8
272 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95
Publication Date: April 2011
From the glamour of Nob Hill to the danger of the docks, San Francisco in the 1930s was a world of wonders for a young woman.
Lorie Bronson, an idealistic college freshman, arrives in San Francisco in the summer of 1939 with her father, who is the judge in the deportation trial of a longshoreman and labor leader (based on Harry Bridges, an iconic labor leader). Lorie misses her mother, who died a year ago, and resents her father’s new wife, Maria. Lorie is destined for law school, but she is more passionately drawn to photography, inspired by the socially relevant photographs of Dorothea Lange. She disobeys her father by spending time down on the docks, photographing longshoreman at work—and in protests and strikes. She is befriended by Dave Rafferty, an appealing longshoreman who turns out to be a company spy, and who teaches her a cynical lesson about romantic idealism. Worse, Lorie realizes that while she was photographing the violent waterfront confrontation she may have been caught on film by a photographer from LIFE, thus endangering the trial and her father’s career. By the end of the summer, Lorie has learned a great deal about photography, social justice, men, and herself.
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