Out of Darkness Book Discussion: Journal Articles & Books

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.

At 3:17 p.m. on March 18, 1937, a natural gas leak beneath the London Junior-Senior High School in the oil boomtown of New London, Texas, created a lethal mixture of gas and oxygen in the school's basement. The odorless, colorless gas went undetected until the flip of an electrical switch triggered a colossal blast.

Springing from the London School explosion in rural New London, Texas, Aftermath begins more than forty years later, when the narrator recalls the dreadful day she lost her mother and many of her schoolmates.