Think you could uncover the only evidence of a widespread government conspiracy by going through some of your old photos?
That was the inspiration for Lis Wiehl’s legal thriller “Snapshot.” The Fox News legal analyst got the idea for the book after uncovering an image of her as a child talking to an African-American little girl at a 1960s Civil Rights march in Fort Worth, Texas.
“There’s a Civil Rights march behind us, that’s all fact,” Wiehl tells TVNewser about the pictures her FBI agent father took. “What happens behind the scenes, I create: the assassination of an up-and-coming civil rights leader, a Martin Luther King Jr. redux.”
Wiehl’s fictional novel fast forwards to today. The little girls, all grown up, are tasked with finding out who the real assassin is before a wrongfully convicted man is put to death.
The book also has some TV news flavor. One of Wiehl’s characters is a top TV news anchor named William O’Ryan — modeled after you know who.
The lawyer/prosecutor character, modeled after Wiehl, has an African-American boyfriend. Her relationship with the other lead character, the little girl from the picture, provokes some serious questions: “They go through their journey, what’s happened since 1965, where are we as far as race goes?”
“This is the most personal book I’ve ever written because my father gave me these pictures,” Wiehl tells TVNewser. “The core is really these two little girls.”
Wiehl hopes the book, released last week, might result in finding the real-life little girl featured in that snapshot, taken at a very different time.