My mother believed in the power of movies and the people in them to change a life, to change her life." So explains Tamara, daughter of Angela, granddaughter of Mildredthe three women whose lives are portrayed in stunning detail in Martha Southgate's accomplished second novel. Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1970 is not a place a smart black girl wants to linger in long. For Angela, twenty years old and beautiful, the stifling conformity is unbearable. She heads to L.A. just as blaxploitation movies are pouring money into the studio and lands a few bit parts before an unplanned pregnancy derails her plans for stardom. For Mildred, movies have always been a blessed diversion in a life marked by the legacy of the 1921 Tulsa race riot. In the Dreamland Theater, she and Angela sat in rare harmony, enthralled by the images on the screen. But when Angela herself appears onscreen, dancing naked, it breaks Mildred's proper heart, and a rift ensues. It falls to Tamara, a budding documentarian, to help mother and grandmother confront all that has been left unsaid in their lives. Like Southgate's first novel, The Fall of Rome, which the New York Times hailed as "a deeply felt book" that brings characters to life with its "clear, penetrating examination," Third Girl from the Left is an enormously entertaining yet serious novel about African American women struggling against all odds to express what lies deepest in their hearts.