Pérez deftly weaves multiple perspectives―including Henry and 'the Gang,' the collective voice of the racist students―into her unflinchingly intense narrative, but the story ultimately belongs to Naomi and Wash. The siblings struggle to fit into the segregated oil town, where store signs boast 'No Negroes, Mexicans, or dogs.' The precocious twins read better than half the senior class, and dark-skinned Naomi is guilty of not only being Mexican, but also of being 'prettier than any girl in school.' Their one friend is Wash, a brilliant African-American senior from the black part of town. Now a born-again Christian, Henry struggles to atone for his sins. Naomi has begrudgingly left behind her abuelitos in San Antonio for a new life with her younger half siblings, twins, and their long-absent white father, Henry. The powerful story opens with the legendary school explosion in New London and then rewinds to September 1936. "A Mexican girl and a black boy begin an ill-fated love in the months leading up to a catastrophic 1937 school explosion in East Texas.
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