In all of modern Oklahoma’s unique and singular identity, there may be nothing more solemn or sacred than the lingering memories and cultural scars of the Oklahoma City Bombing, scars that persist even now, 30 years later.
But even for as firmly and unforgettably as that tragic event lives in our hearts and minds, it surprisingly doesn’t seem to live as clearly in our fiction.
Enter Oklahoman author and writing professor Constance Squires and her new novel “Low April Sun,” the story of a disparate few people scattered across Oklahoma and their various connections, proximities, traumas, and even quiet personal mysteries surrounding the Bombing.
Told across multiple timelines before, during, and even years after April of 1995, “Low April Sun” not only examines the reverberating effect that the attack continues to have on Oklahoman lives, but also delves a bit into the dangerous fringe mentalities that helped lead to such an atrocity.
For Squires, it was a way of confronting this tragic history, but also of placing Oklahoma more forcefully within modern America’s literary landscape.
Constance Squires: I was intentional about the historical moments that I was trying to talk about.
And then also the place. I mean, I have a really strong feeling about getting Oklahoma on the literary map in an accurate way, you know?
I mean, we have a lot of stories that the wider country or world knows about Oklahoma that have to do with, you know, the Dust Bowl and the land runs and things like that, and that stuff's important. But as far as the way contemporary literature works, there's not a lot of fiction about contemporary, modern Oklahoma.
Brett Fieldcamp: Rather than focus entirely on the event and its close aftermath, “Low April Sun” tells much of its story in 2015, allowing Squires to not only consider the lasting ramifications of the Bombing on the contemporary world of Oklahoma, but also to confront some other notable elements of our state’s recent history and the unexpected connections between them, in particular the rash of earthquakes that shook the state throughout that year.
One of the novel’s central characters, Edie, is a spokesperson for an oil and gas company and is tasked with downplaying any connection to the earthquakes in the lead up to the 20th anniversary of the Bombing, in which Edie lost her sister.
Constance Squires: I did some research and found out the very week of the 20-year anniversary of the Bombing was when the Oklahoma Geological Survey was going to publish its findings.
I thought, “okay, I have to do something with that.” And so I started to kind of evolved this job for Edie, where she had… a lot of it felt, to me, like guilt was a major theme in the book, and for her to have a lot of guilt, where it's her job to pretend like nothing's wrong, that all just sort of evolved.
Brett Fieldcamp: In the book, Edie and her husband Keith find their delicately balanced world and barely contained desperation shaken just like the earth when they’re contacted by someone online using her sister’s name, setting them onto a path that crosses with other characters harboring their own unresolved memories of the Bombing.
While the characters and their stories evolved for Squires over time, the experience and feeling of the hours, days, and weeks after the event came directly from her own memories, including her own recollection of the moment of the blast itself.
Constance Squires: I was right where I put the characters. I was at 22nd and Villa.
I remember the helplessness that I felt, just feeling like I needed to do more, yeah.
And then, of course, researching it, talking to people, I just, you know, was inundated by people's stories about it. I talked to people that were part of the rescue, part of the forensics, part of a lot of different people. I mean, it definitely changed my sense of the world.
Brett Fieldcamp: She admits that it was a difficult headspace to remain in while writing the book, but it’s her hope that it can help open the door to more stories and more discussion of the continuing trauma and grief that the memory of that time still carries for so many Oklahomans.
Constance Squires: You know, I mean, it is difficult to write about it, and you feel a big sense of responsibility.
But by failing to do it, by sort of being intimidated by the sacredness of the material, then you're really failing the material, you know. You have to take it on, sort of honor the reality of the material, but then also tell a story about it.
It kind of evolved that sort of trauma’s long game was what the book is about, you know, about the way we tell stories, about things that we're still struggling with, and the way the community and the individuals have to keep processing it.
Brett Fieldcamp: But the result, she says, has been overwhelmingly positive, both for herself and for readers and audiences that have already responded to the book with their own recollections of grief, but also of healing, something that Squires hopes her book can encourage even more.
Constance Squires: It’s been wonderful, it really has. Just everyone I've talked to has been really great about it. I've had so many people come up and tell me their own stories.
Brett Fieldcamp: The novel “Low April Sun” is available now from University of Oklahoma Press, and Constance Squires will be in person for reading and signing events for the book at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Lawton on March 15th, at Literati Press in OKC on March 21st, and at Magic City Books in Tulsa on April 17th.
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