A Trial in Summer

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. Lorie misses her mother, who died a year ago, and resents her fathers 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 workand in protests and strikes. She is befriended by Dave Rafferty, an appealing longshoreman who turns out to be a company spy. Dave steals her photos, and her camera, and publishes the photos in the union paper, thus endangering the trial and her fathers career. By the end of the summer, Lorie has learned a great deal about photography, social justice, men, and herself.