Review: OUT OF DARKNESS

My review of Out of Darkness (Carolrhoda Lab) by Ashley Hope P�rez was published in Lone Star Literary Life! This book is marketed as YA fiction but I'm not sure why except that our heroine is seventeen; the conflicts presented challenge the most mature among us. Out of Darkness raised my blood pressure, made me laugh, and made me cry - true story. From the review:

Out of Darkness is fine historical fiction. P�rez weaves separate narratives of each of the characters, including �The Gang,� the dispassionate report of a vicious collective Greek chorus of high school students, to create a devastating portrait of barriers � race, gender, religion, and class � in East Texas during the Great Depression. 

P�rez�s characters are distinct, complex individuals. Henry, with his �born-again smile� and �wholesome look of the redeemed,� lives a life defined by selfishness and self-pity. Superstitious, he reunites with his children after several years and moves them to East Texas because his pastor told him that was what God wanted, but Naomi had always been �a shadow at the edges of his happiness. Later, she�d been a brief, disastrous solution.� Henry �Anglo-cizes� the children�s names, a move that doesn�t sit well with Naomi, who considers �Smith� �a slick, faceless thing, a coin worn smooth. Maybe that was why he [Henry] did not understand that carrying a name was a way of caring for those who�d given it. Naomi Consuelo Corona Vargas. That was her name.� Wash is smart and impatient with the necessary bowing and scraping to whites. �Wash knew better. � Better was a safe place. Better was what you were supposed to do. � But Wash�wanted to know Naomi more than he wanted to know better.�

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