Year of Our Lord

Lucas McCarty lives in the Mississippi Delta. He is the only white congregant in the African-American Trinity House of Prayer Holiness church. Lucas is bereft of the ability to speak due to cerebral palsy, yet he sings there in the church choir. Thus is the subject of Year of Our Lord, a portrait of courage, acceptance and grace, rendered in the lyrical prose of T.R. Pearson and the haunting photographs of Langdon Clay.
Year of Our Lord is a visual journey, exploring one of the poorest parts of the American South, a place that economic progress has left behind. And it is a spiritual journey, a revelation of a community that has replaced the hope for earthly prosperity with an abundance of faith in God and the life beyond. The Delta's is a culture that can look upon Lucas and say, "God doesn't make a mistake." It is a place that in the face of abject poverty can proclaim, life offers "too much joy!" Year of Our Lord, then, is an opportunity to see into another's world, and to embrace the best of it.
"Tom Pearson's unlikely journey into the troubled soul of the Mississippi Delta yields a story filled with compassion, tolerance, and hope. His travel mate is Lucas McCarty, a white boy damaged at birth. Lucas can't speak but is always welcome in the choir of a black Pentecostal church where he is accepted without reservation. Author and subject form a unique friendship, one captured not only in Pearson's elegant prose but also in the extraordinary photography of Langdon Clay." -- John Grisham