Ashley Hope Perez sets her historical novel in New London, Texas, in 1937, in the shadow of a real school explosion that killed hundreds of students and teachers. At its center are two teenagers: Naomi, who is Mexican-American, and Wash, who is Black, drawn together in a segregated town with no room for them. Around their love story Perez builds a wider portrait of race, poverty, and the quiet cruelties of the era, moving steadily toward the disaster the reader already knows is coming. Written for young adults, it stays unflinching about the forces that grind down the people caught between them.