I actually had to close the book at one point to seek respite with Facebook. Her layered tale of color lines, love and struggle in an East Texas oil town is a pit-in-the-stomach family drama that goes down like it should, with pain and fascination, like a mix of sugary medicine and artisanal moonshine. What is that urge, the desire to soak in anguish and injustice as we come of age? Whatever it is, Ashley Hope Pérez's new novel, Out of Darkness, fills the need. A mere mention of All Quiet on the Western Front or I Am the Cheese, and I'm right back to brooding again in the ocean-deep emotions of my adolescence. 'The novels that burn into our minds as young adults often involve horror of some kind. A powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism.'―starred, Kirkus Reviews ( Journal) But as heartbreaking events unfold, the star-crossed lovers desperately hope that any light can penetrate the black smoke cloud of darkness spreading around them. Their beautifully detailed love story blossoms in the relative seclusion of the woods, where even stepfathers can't keep them apart. Pérez deftly weaves multiple perspectives―including Henry and 'the Gang,' the collective voice of the racist students―into her unflinchingly intense narrative, but the story ultimately belongs to Naomi and Wash. The siblings struggle to fit into the segregated oil town, where store signs boast 'No Negroes, Mexicans, or dogs.' The precocious twins read better than half the senior class, and dark-skinned Naomi is guilty of not only being Mexican, but also of being 'prettier than any girl in school.' Their one friend is Wash, a brilliant African-American senior from the black part of town. Now a born-again Christian, Henry struggles to atone for his sins. Naomi has begrudgingly left behind her abuelitos in San Antonio for a new life with her younger half siblings, twins, and their long-absent white father, Henry. The powerful story opens with the legendary school explosion in New London and then rewinds to September 1936. 'A Mexican girl and a black boy begin an ill-fated love in the months leading up to a catastrophic 1937 school explosion in East Texas.

Perez out of darkness