Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Out of Darkness
    Unavailable
    Out of Darkness
    Unavailable
    Out of Darkness
    Audiobook12 hours

    Out of Darkness

    Written by Ashley Hope Pérez

    Narrated by Benita Robledo and Lincoln Hoppe

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Read the ebook instead

    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 26, 2016
    ISBN9780735289468
    Author

    Ashley Hope Pérez

    Ashley Hope Pérez is the author of award-winning books for young adults, including What Can’t Wait, The Knife and the Butterfly, and Out of Darkness. Out of Darkness was described by The New York Times as a “layered tale of color lines, love and struggle” and was named one of Booklist’s “50 Best YA Books of All Time.” It also won the 2016 Tomás Rivera Book Award, the 2016 Américas Award, and a 2016 Printz honor for excellence in young adult literature from the American Library Association. When she’s not writing or hanging out with her two beautiful sons, Liam Miguel and Ethan Andrés, Ashley teaches world literature at The Ohio State University. Visit her online at www.ashleyperez.com or find her on Twitter and Instagram: @ashleyhopeperez.

    Related to Out of Darkness

    Related audiobooks

    YA Social Themes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      New Fiction

      Jun 11, 2021

      This elegant debut novel is based on the true beginnings of the Oxford English Dictionary. Interspersing real-life figures with fictional characters, Williams explores words, in particular the different meanings and significance they can have for men

      1 min read

    • Article

      Finding “A House in Taos”

      Mar 19, 2024

      Finding “A House in Taos”
      9 min read

    • Article

      Identity Crisis

      Oct 9, 2022

      Identity Crisis
      2 min read

    • Article

      Fresh Reads For February

      Jan 31, 2020

      Fresh Reads For February
      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Sacks, Zambreno, Lawlor, McEwan, and More

      Apr 23, 2019

      Out this week: new Ian McEwan, a fascinating study of the American heartland, and the final collection from the late, great Oliver Sacks. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Sacks, Zambreno, Lawlor, McEwan, and More appeared first on The Milli

      4 min read

    • Article

      Fresh Reads For February

      Jan 31, 2020

      Fresh Reads For February
      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jun 5, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      First-Class Murals

      Jul 30, 2020

      First-Class Murals
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Rope Review: Ida Wells, The NAACP And A Slim Thread To A Murder

      Feb 20, 2021

      This is a book about an important and long-overlooked Black woman civil rights leader, and an intrepid New York City private investigator who solved a murder at the seashore in New Jersey in which a Black laborer was wrongly accused of the crime. “Th

      3 min read

    • Article

      Learning Queerstory

      Aug 15, 2023

      Learning Queerstory
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Blue-collar Bard

      Jul 13, 2020

      The Blue-collar Bard
      13 min read

    • Article

      Hidden Figures

      Oct 29, 2020

      Hidden Figures
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Western’s Long Glorification of Oppression

      Jun 8, 2021

      “IT JUST SO HAPPENS WE BE TEXIcans,” says Mrs. Jorgensen, an older woman wearing her blond hair in a tight bun, to rough-and-tumble cowboy Ethan Edwards in the 1956 film The Searchers. Mrs. Jorgensen, played by Olive Carey, and Edwards, played by Joh

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Founding Class

      Dec 2, 2019

      A Founding Class
      4 min read

    • Article

      Great Reads

      Jun 10, 2022

      Inspired by real events, the New York Times bestselling author of The Warsaw Orphan returns with an unputdownable novel of a community torn apart when a former Nazi family moves into town to work on NASA’s space program For fans of the compulsive ps

      2 min read

    Reviews for Out of Darkness

    4/5

    57 ratings10 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      The Urban Dictionary's definition of a Book Hangover is: When you've finished a book and you suddenly return to the real world, but the real world feels incomplete or surreal because you're still living in the world of the book. To say I'm suffering from one is an understatement. This book transported me to a different time period, a different life, and whole different mind set. I was blown away by the reality within the words and gut punched by tragedy. Out of the Darkness deserves like 10 Stars it was that good!

      Naomi and her siblings are sent to live with their daddy/"step daddy" and with that comes a brutal past and a terrifying present. He is a racist, a drunk, and a born again-but not really- christian. He is a walking nightmare. He is so unpredictable that everyone walks on egg shells around him. Naomi especially because they have a past and he wants her in ways he shouldn't... While she would love to flee and never look back, she has the kids to worry about. She doesn't expect much, but when a guy sees her foot dangling from a tree her life seems to turn upside down. She feels happy and finally can see a light at the end of tunnel. Unfortunately, what may seem great slowly turns to turmoil.

      This book was unlike anything I've read before.. It should be a classic! I will say that again. This book should be read by EVERYONE... While it was based around a forbidden romance it also captured the essence of the time period and how racism touched all those around. It was hard to read at times, but life changing in the most unexpected way. It was like grasping sand. Reality slowly drifted away and I was surrounded by smoldering ash, blood, and a broken heart.

      It wasn't all tragedy though... There was a passionate romance that had intimacy and friendship and so much more. Wash and Naomi will forever be embedded in my mind. I loved their story so much that as soon as I finished the last page I wanted to start it all over. So I absolutely recommend this book! I can't wait to read more from the Author and if I could find this beauty signed somewhere I would be all over it.

      READ IT!
    • 5/5
      A beautiful Romeo and Juliet inspired tale filled with pain, strife, and the the promise of something greater.
    • 4/5
      Naomi moves to East Texas with her twin siblings after their grandparents have a hard time caring for them and the twins' father has found God and summons them to live with him. Naomi has much darker skin than her siblings and is more clearly Mexican, she soon faces the discrimination that this brings. When they meet Wash, an African-American teen, there is a connection. The characters are well drawn in this heartbreaking story of love, loss, and life in 1930s Texas. The book uses the 1937 school explosion (one of the worst school disasters in US history) as the backdrop. The book doesn't shy away from the racism of the time. I felt a sense of foreboding for about the second half of the book. And the tragedy struck again and again for these characters that I had come to cheer for and wanted to be okay. Naomi is stuck in an impossible situation which seems to get worse once her step-father makes his intentions known.
    • 5/5
      Naomi and her twins half-siblings move to live with their father in a Texas oil town. Henry, the twins' father, is white, Naomi is Mexican, the twins look white, and Wash, the boy who befriends the twins and who Naomi loves, is black. Racial lines are not crossed in Eastern Texas without consequences.
    • 5/5
      A Romeo and Juliet type of love story that takes place in east Texas in the 1930s. I had to skip several chapters because of the violence.
    • 4/5
      Forced to leave her grandparents' home with the hope of a "better life," Naomi and her younger twin siblings, Cari and Beto, move to Texas to her stepfather's home. Henry Smith is white while his twins are half-white and half-Mexican and Naomi is 100% Mexican. Texas during the 1930s did not tolerate other races, so the children are enrolled in schools and considered "white" based on Henry's race. Troubling backstories are revealed slowly and explain Naomi's reluctance to accept her stepfather's newfound kindness and even her new "black" friend's help. Naomi deals with racism as teens and adults do not accept the race facade her stepfather created for the community. Told in alternating voices, Perez shares many points of view of how the community deals with racism, relationships, school life, jealousy, and abuse. Deep and dark, on many levels, this book rivets the soul and leaves readers astonished at the level of ignorance and inability to cross borders of learning and tolerance of this town. Recommended to: mature teens (sex, abuse), historical fiction fans, Romeo and Juliet fans, and those interested in racial tensions.
    • 4/5
      This book is almost too horrible to read, in fact, I wish I hadn't finished it. We all know the horrors of racism and the clan in the mid-20th century South. I don't know that we had to have the details spelled out. This could have been a very good book, she has some good psychological insights if only she alluded to the violence and not illuminated it.
    • 4/5
      This book was on my list of diverse titles to read this year. I’m not sure the description of the book would have grabbed me otherwise, but I’m so glad I read it. It was a beautiful, emotional story about a Mexican girl trying to live in an East Texas town in 1937. She’s treated differently than whites, of course, but also differently than blacks. It’s an interesting historical novel based on a true school explosion but it’s deeper than that, and I highly recommend it.
    • 5/5
      A horror story based in reality. Texas, in 1936. People are rushing to find work at the oil wells. Naomi, of Mexican heritage, and her bi-racial twin step-siblings are sent to live with the twins’ white father in an oil camp. Naomi feels the wrath of racism and her brother and sister, deemed to be white, excel in academics. Her step-father sees her as a substitute for her mother, his dead wife. Naomi is befriended by the black son of the black school principal. Knowing that their love can’t be shown, they vow to run away….and the story turns so ugly, as the white school is blown apart by a gas explosion. There is no happy ending, and I wish I could say no one should read this book, but with politics as they are, it must be read to show what hatred can do.
    • 4/5
      YA Historical FictionAshley Hope PérezOut of DarknessCarolrhoda LabHardcover, 978-1467742023 (also available as an ebook), 408 pgs., $18.99September 1, 2015 Henry Smith moves his children, twins Cari and Beto, along with his stepdaughter and their half-sister, Naomi, to New London, Texas, in 1936, where he works in the new booming oil industry. Henry is Anglo, Naomi is Mexican, and the twins are half-and-half. Naomi, hating Henry and blaming him for her mother’s death, doesn’t belong anywhere — the owner of the whites-only grocery (“No Negroes, Mexicans, or dogs” reads the sign in the window) won’t let her shop there and the owner of the grocery for blacks is nervous when she brings the twins, who pass for white. Naomi finds kindness, acceptance, and, eventually, love, with Wash Fuller, a black boy who does odd jobs for the school. Influenced by historical accounts of the 1937 explosion of the New London School, Ashley Hope Pérez uses the explosion to bring the conflicts to a shattering conclusion. Out of Darkness is fine historical fiction. Pérez 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. Pérez’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.” Pérez uses precisely chosen words with multiple meanings to poetic effect. A reluctant Naomi is tempted to wait in Henry’s truck instead of joining the church picnic “away from the dressed-up chickens that would peck and peck at her until they found something tasty.” Beto loves the piney forests of East Texas, so different from his native San Antonio, because the “woods gave him the feeling of being inside and outside at the same time. Full of birds and animals but hushed, too, like a church the hour before Mass.”The intricate plot develops gradually, but inexorably; the masterful pace moving us from vague unease, through trepidation, to horrified certainty. Out of Darkness is appropriately titled and the “heart rot” hollowing the tree that Naomi and Wash use as a hiding place is the perfect metaphor for the whole society.Originally published by Lone Star Literary Life.