A Leg in Oklahoma City

LOCAL AUTHOR

A Leg in Oklahoma City is a heart-wrenching story about a boy named Tris Killian who meets the love of his life and narrates the story about he about how he loses her. As he retells the story about the Amish girl who moved to California from Oklahoma, he refuses to give the reader her name. That is something that he keeps for himself. What we do know about her is that she has a duffel bag full of money she inherited, her parents and grandparents have passed away, and she lives inside a redwood tree. The chapters alternate between Tris telling the story of how he and his love met and became close in a short period of time and with chapters that described the death penalty being carried out for the man convicted of the Oklahoma City bombing. What I thought was interesting was how the tone of the story changed from chapter to chapter. The chapters that involved Tris and his girlfriend are full of love and tenderness and caring. The chapters that have to do with the death penalty and people who have come to witness it being carried out are full of hate and rightfully so because these people have also have lost their love ones to this horrible man.

One thing I like the most about this book was that there were not too many characters. It was very simple— much like the girl in the book who only need a handful of things to live and survive. I think this is what attracted Tris to her immediately. Her sweet demeanor made the story beautiful and innocent like a first true love would be. It was also the little details that made this book great, such as the chip in her tooth or the description of the art that she painted. Although the reader knows that something bad is going to happen, we don’t know exactly what or how Tris loses his love. We only know that it has something to do with the Oklahoma bombings.

Because the characters are in California, we can only make assumptions until Tris tells us what happened. This book is a page-turner that I could not put it down. It’s a book that you could read over and over again because of the beautiful prose the author uses when describing the relationship between Tris and the girl. The author knows how to build up the climax of the story and, although we can feel the happiness of both Tristan and the girl, there is a sense of dread as the book comes to a close. But even then the reader hopes that there is some way or somehow the characters defeat the odds. This book was unlike any other book I’ve ever read. It was a love story, lessons learned, and the gathering of those who have lost.