Squires applied the Page 69 Test to Low April Sun and reported the following:
Page 69 of Low April Sun finds one of the main characters, Edie Ash, in the earlier of the two timelines in the book. It's April 19, 1995, and she, a young waitress driving home on the day of the Murrah Bombing in Oklahoma City, is sitting at an intersection in the rain when President Clinton's speech addressing the bombing comes on the air. She looks around and realizes that all of the people in the other cars at the intersection are weeping, as she is.Visit Constance E. Squires's website.
I wouldn't say page 69 encapsulates the whole book, but it does capture some important elements. What it doesn't do is give a sense of the other timeline, 2015 during the week of the twenty-year anniversary of the bombing and the Oklahoma Geological Survey's confirmation that the 200+ earthquakes shaking the area per day are in all likelihood caused by fracking, or the other significant characters with stories in both timelines, or even the plot of the book, but it does provide a good reaction shot of a main character on the day of the bombing, and a sense that the impact of the disaster on the larger community is a focus of the book, which it is. There are a few isolated places in the book where I'm pulling from my own memories of being in Oklahoma City that day, and this page is one of them. It's one of the core memories that gave rise to the story. Sitting in my car in the rain watching everyone in the other cars listening to Clinton speak and weeping openly was one of the moments when a layer of shock peeled off and I was aware of being in an unbelievable day. The character, Edie, is noticing with a little shame how the devastation gives rise to atavistic responses and primitive thoughts in her, like a willingness to be consoled by a leader, a need for justice, and even the sense that the rain seems like nature reacting to all the deaths. That interiority is characteristic of the voice, and a focus on the environment as an active part of the story, almost a character, is, too.
My Book, The Movie: Low April Sun.
--Marshal Zeringue