One Day in New London

By P.L. Spangler

On March 18, 1937 the New London School in New London, Texas exploded. It was the worst school-related disaster in United States history, killing an estimated 296 people, mostly children. One Day in New London is the historical fiction novel focusing on that event. The story is told through the eyes of Alfred Townsend, an eighty-year-old man that returns to his hometown after seventy years. His purpose is to make peace with a day that took the lives of almost everyone he cared for as a child - including his entire family. Alfred relays his tale while sitting among the dead with his daughter and grandchildren in the cemetery. He tells of a town that struck oil during the Great Depression and how people used their wealth to build a one million dollar school that was the finest learning facility in the nation. Yet, he also tells of townspeople that found themselves being divided into social classes after becoming prosperous and slowly loosing their ties to people that they once believed they could not exist without. It is the struggle of the characters to retain their sense of belonging to others, in the midst of social change, that sets the stage for the story prior to the explosion. On March 18, 1937 Abel talks a group of his friends into playing hooky from school, although his sister, Lydia, begs him to join her in class. Jimmy, the town's sheriff, covers up a murder to protect his best friend. And after the explosion, a slow man named, Walter, proves that a kind heart is more powerful than any amount of money when people are not the ones in control. As Alfred's tale builds, it is apparent that his search for peace exists not only with a day that changed his life forever, but with his forty-year-old daughter that believes he would be better off in a nursing home. And it is his daughter's current control over his life that causes him to reflect on the anger that he has held for his father - a dead man that he blames for everything that went wrong. In the aftermath of the explosion the survivors in New London are forced to make decisions that will impact them throughout the rest of their days. Some find their lives consumed by grief. Some contemplate suicide and still others take a long walk with the dead. One Day in New London, though fiction, looks at the lives of people that were thrust into a nightmare and then, feeling that the world had grown weary of their agony, were forgotten by a nation and the world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1478104058
• ISBN13: 9781478104056
• Release Date: June 2012
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 314 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"