This beautiful and haunting historical novel will stay with you always. history that today’s readers must examine thoughtfully. Told through multiple points of view, the tragedies in Out of Darkness, both Ashley’s researched facts and her developed fiction, set a dialogue for U.S. Short chapters push the story ahead while we watch the characters’ relationships unfold and intertwine. Set in New London, Texas in 1937, Ashley writes a story seeped in historical traumas that she balances with a love story between her characters, Wash and Naomi. Someone to make pay.”Īshley pulls no punches when it comes to the emotional toll she hammers against her characters and, in turn, her readers. The prologue ends with, “More than grief, more than anger, there is a need. Mostly, though, they find bodies.” The prologue continues, describing the hours and days just after the explosion. They cart away rubble and search for survivors. “Within the great circle,” she writes, “men crawl over the crumpled form of the collapsed school. If you can pull through the prologue without your heart crumbling to nothing, you might be strong enough to continue reading. Reading the prologue to Ashley Hope Pérez’s award-winning historical fiction novel, Out of Darkness, is a litmus test to see if you can emotionally handle this haunting work.
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