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Bonus Web Review: Crossing the Lines Print Email
Written by Staff   
Friday, 24 April 2009 03:01 PM America/New_York
altCrossing the Lines
Richard Doster
David C. Cook
softcover, 416 pages, $14.99
978-1-434-79984-5

Richard Doster evokes memories of the civil rights movement of the 1950s in his second novel set in the South. Crossing the Lines continues the story of newspaper reporter Jack Hall, who's sent to Montgomery, Ala., to report on a minor incident involving a woman who refused give up her seat in a “whites only” section of a city bus.

Once there, Jack forms a friendship with a young Martin Luther King Jr. and is witness to some of the civil rights movement’s most dramatic events. As he sees and learns more about the struggle for justice, Jack also confronts the long-held racial stereotypes of Christians of whom he goes to church with, including his wife Rose Marie who can’t understand why people are making such a fuss.

Doster weaves his fictional characters into stories of actual events so seamlessly that it is difficult to know where reality ends and fiction begins. The dialogue given King and others is historically accurate based on the author’s exhaustive research. Crossing The Lines is a good read that provides an insider's view of a part of history they may have missed.
Written by Jim Seybert