Out of Darkness

About Out of Darkness

Out of Darkness is a novel by Ashley Hope Pérez, published in 2015 by Carolrhoda Lab. It is set in New London, Texas in 1937, in the wake of the Kilgore oil boom — a world where money has arrived suddenly in a poor region and the rigid racial hierarchy that sustains its social order is maintained with particular violence. Naomi Vargas is Mexican American; she and her younger half-siblings have arrived in New London to live with their stepfather, a cruel and controlling man who keeps them under constant threat. Wash Fuller is Black. Both of them know exactly where the town draws its lines and what happens to people who cross them.

Their relationship develops in the spaces between those lines — in secret, at risk, and with full knowledge of what discovery would mean. Pérez builds the relationship slowly and carefully, giving both characters full interior lives and a love that is grounded in specific recognition of each other rather than in the abstraction of forbidden desire. The town's racial geography — the separate schools, the segregated spaces — is rendered in careful historical detail.

The novel culminates in a historical catastrophe: the New London School explosion of March 18, 1937, which killed nearly 300 students and teachers when a natural gas leak ignited in the school basement. It remains the deadliest school disaster in American history. Pérez embeds her fictional love story in this real event with precision and restraint.

Historical Context

The New London school disaster was real. The school had been using residue gas — a natural gas byproduct — to heat the building to save money. A spark from a sanding machine ignited the accumulated gas, and the explosion destroyed the building and killed approximately 295 people. The disaster led directly to the odorization of natural gas (adding the distinctive smell that makes gas detectable) — a change that has saved countless lives since.

Pérez researched the disaster extensively and grounds her fictional narrative in the historical record. The novel's second half builds toward the explosion with a specific dread — readers who know the history understand what is coming before the characters do — and the intersection of Naomi and Wash's story with this historical event gives the novel a particular emotional weight.

Why Out of Darkness Has Been Banned

Out of Darkness has been banned or challenged in 11 states across 54 school districts. Challenges most commonly cite the novel's sexual content — Naomi and Wash's relationship includes intimate scenes — and its language. The novel's frank treatment of racism, specifically the violent enforcement of segregation in 1930s Texas, has also been cited in some challenges.

The interracial same-sex (heterosexual) relationship between Naomi and Wash has generated some of the most pointed banning arguments, with some parents objecting to its depiction as positive and desirable in a school setting. Pérez has been an active advocate against book banning, speaking publicly about the importance of historical fiction that shows young readers the real stakes of the systems they live inside — including the systems of racism that continue to shape American life.