Ron Rozelle is a local Texas writer who describes the 1937 New London explosion in New London, Texas. Our Third Tuesday book club had read Suzanne Morris’s Aftermath, which dealt with the on-going effects of the horrendous tragedy afterwards. (For a review use the search box). Rozelle’s book was mentioned at the time, but I didn’t get around to reading it until this past weekend.

I had read another book by Rozelle, a memoir of his father and the father’s death, so I knew he was a good writer. He explains why he wrote the book, “I’ve known about the 1937 explosion all my life.” Rozelle lived only 80 miles away, and his father had gone to help find survivors and casualties, and Rozelle tells us what his father saw that night was so horrible, it prevented his father from speaking of it. Rozelle had been told the cause of the explosion was the superintendent of the school or the school board had tapped into free natural gas, which caused a buildup that exploded. He later learned that was not true, and he wished to clear the superintendent’s name.

The narrative opens with anecdotes of kids getting ready for school, parents leaving for work, and goes through the day of those individuals until minutes before the last bell of the school day, when the world “turned upside down.” Rozelle deals with the rescue, then the recovery of bodies and identification of body parts, and finally, the aftermath.

This is non-fiction at its best–carefully researched through interviews and diaries and journals. It is a history that should not be forgotten , and Rozelle has done a beautiful job of seeing that that will not happen.