Sam: The Boy Behind The Mask

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist journeys into the life of Sam Lightner, a young boy born with a rare, disfiguring growth that distorts the left side of his face, from the dangerous operation to remove the malformation, to his lapse into a life-threatening coma, to his struggle back to life, in a poignant true story about a remarkable boy, medical miracles, and the meaning of hope. Reprint.

Tom Hallman, Jr., won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for a series of articles about Sam Lightner that was published in the Oregonion. Hallman, who had been a Pulitzer finalist twice before, has also received multiple American Society of Newspaper Editors awards, a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, a National Headliner Award, and a Nixon National Writing Award. A reporter for more than twenty-five years, Hallman has been at the Oregonian since 1980.