Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2015
408 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
"This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?"
New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive.
Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion the worst school disaster in American history as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people.
BookBrowse Review
"The last sentence in this novel is a plea to remember the story and share it... presumably to raise awareness of the kind of foul behavior detailed in the book. This request is filling me with guilt. I know that you must face awful things in order to change them. But still, there is so much hate, physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, racism, death and grief in this novel, I just cannot see myself recommending it to friends, even to other adults. " - Darcie Abbene
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. Set against the backdrop of an actual historical event, Pérez's young adult novel gives voice to many long-omitted facets of U.S. history." - School Library Journal
"Starred Review. A powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism." - Kirkus Reviews
"The beauty of Perez's prose and her surefooted navigation through the dangerous landscape of the East Texas oil field in the late 1930s redeem the fact that anyone who dares read this agonizing star-crossed love story will end up in about six billion numb and tiny pieces. Absolutely stunning." - Elizabeth Wein, author of Code Name Verity and Michael L. Printz Award Honoree
This information about Out of Darkness was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ashley Hope Pérez is the author of the YA novels Out of Darkness, The Knife and the Butterfly, and What Can't Wait. Her debut novel What Can't Wait won a spot on the 2012 YALSA Best Fiction for YA list, and The Knife and the Butterfly was included in the 2015 YALSA Popular Paperbacks list. Ashley grew up in Texas and taught high school in Houston before pursuing a PhD in comparative literature. She is now a visiting assistant professor of comparative studies at The Ohio State University and spends most of her time reading, writing, and teaching on topics from global youth narratives to Latin American and Latina/o fiction. She lives in Ohio with her husband, Arnulfo, and their son, Liam Miguel.
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