Pip has known and liked Sal since childhood he’d supported her when she was being bullied in middle school. There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.Įveryone believes that Salil Singh killed his girlfriend, Andrea Bell, five years ago-except Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. But as heartbreaking events unfold, the star-crossed lovers desperately hope that any light can penetrate the black smoke cloud of darkness spreading around them.Ī powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism. Their beautifully detailed love story blossoms in the relative seclusion of the woods, where even stepfathers can't keep them apart. 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-American 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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