![]() ![]() Henry has abused her and continues to be disturbing, at best. Naomi, as a brown girl in a community segregated between black and white, doesn’t fit in. ![]() Naomi, Beto, and Cari all have the same mother (also Mexican American), who died after giving birth to the twins. He is the father of Naomi’s half-siblings, the young twins Beto and Cari. The novel is about a Mexican American girl named Naomi, who has been forced to move to New London, Texas, to live with her white stepfather, Henry. The last section of the novel is a downhill skid into a nightmare that is inescapable, heartbreaking, and powerful. It is by turns hopeful, horrifying, passionate, tragic, and unflinching. ![]() ![]() Out of Darkness reveals itself, page by page, to be deeply committed to exposing the reality of life in East Texas in 1937. The more I read, the deeper I fell into the story that Pérez was telling, and the more certain I was that this novel deserves every accolade it has received. This was not the case with Out of Darkness. Sometimes I read critically acclaimed books and wind up wondering if I missed something because I don’t understand why they were so highly praised. It garnered several starred reviews, praise in the The New York Times Book Review, and was awarded a Printz Honor. Recently I read Ashley Hope Pérez’s gut-wrenching historical novel, Out of Darkness, which was one of the most critically acclaimed YA novels to be released last year. ![]()
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