Out of Darkness
Binding: Hardcover
Age 13+
General Fiction
A love story told against the backdrop of a little-known American tragedy with a diverse cast of characters.
Out of Darkness is a work of historical young adult fiction, loosely based on an actual school explosion that took place in New London, Texas in 1937. Ashley Hope Perez has taken the explosion as her backdrop and imagined a diverse cast of characters whose broken lives are utterly captivating and tragically entangled with the school and the explosion. The central story is that of two teenagers: Naomi, who is Mexican, and Wash, who is black. It's a gripping novel about race, segregation, love, and the forces that destroy people.
Creators
Ashley Hope Perez grew up in Texas and served in the Teach for America Corps in Houston. She holds a PhD in comparative literature and is a visiting assistant professor of comparative studies at The Ohio State University. She spends most of her time reading, writing, and teaching college classes on a wide range of topics that includes vampire literature and Latin-American women writers. She is the author of the YA novels What Can't Wait (Carolrhoda, 2011) and The Knife and the Butterfly (Carolrhoda, 2012). Her debut novel What Can't Wait won a spot on the 2012 YALSA Best Fiction for YA list. Ashley lives in Ohio with her husband, Arnulfo, and their son, Liam Miguel. Visit her online at http://www.ashleyperez.com/.
