Abstract

The reading is an excerpt from the author’s third fourth book of fiction, Low April Sun, a multi-vocal novel that takes place in Oklahoma City twenty years after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Moving back and forth between 1995 and 2015, the novel opens in 2015 when Edie and Keith, a professional couple recently returned to Oklahoma City after years abroad, receive Facebook invitations from someone they believe perished in the bombing despite conclusive evidence, and follows them as they look for the truth about their past while struggling with the present troubles in their marriage and work lives. A cast of characters whose lives revolve around the bombing in different ways each pursue their own purposes–a conspiracy theorist bent on finding the second bomber whom he believes aided Timothy McVeigh, a damaged man whose childhood growing up on the compound at Eloheem City, where he met McVeigh days before the bombing, a professional gambler intent on roping Keith into his money-making schemes that depend on Edie’s work in one of the oil companies responsible for the fracking earthquakes plaguing the Oklahoma City area, and Edie’s sister as she narrates her experience at the Murrah Building on the morning of April 19, 1995.

Presenters

Constance Squires
Professor of English/Creative Writing and Graduate Director of Creative Writing, University of Central Oklahoma, Oklahoma, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

2022 Special Focus—What to Make of Crises: Emerging Methods, Principles, Actions

KEYWORDS

Crisis, Character, Narrative, Social, Fiction, Literature, Trauma

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