One of my least well-known nonfiction books is also one that’s closest to my heart.

All of a Sudden and Forever: Help and Healing After the Oklahoma City Bombing (illustrated by Nicole Xu and published by Carolrhoda Books/Lerner Publishing) was based in part on my interviews with survivors, first responders, and family members of victims.

It was published two months before the 25th anniversary of the April 1995 tragedy — and one month before Covid commandeered the world’s attention.

“This emotionally powerful book explores how the survival of an American elm tree became a symbol and a promise of healing after a horrible tragedy,” wrote the Los Angeles Public Library in one of several best-books-of-2020 roundups that included All of a Sudden and Forever.

As the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing approaches, I remain hopeful that more readers will discover this book. I hope that encountering All of a Sudden and Forever will bring comfort to people affected by tragedies both public and private. There have certainly been times in my own life when reading this book would have been a balm.

And I am heartened by the other ways that stories of help and healing in the wake of the terrorist attack continue to be told and passed forward, such as the new Survivor Tree Memorial Plaza at Oklahoma Christian University. I recently shared a copy of All of a Sudden and Forever with the university’s administration, and I feel moved to share it with you, too.

All of a Sudden and Forever is just one of the titles included in the August 2024 book giveaway that I’m doing for subscribers to my monthly Bartography Express newsletter (folks can sign up here).

Four Bartography Express subscribers will win one copy of each giveaway title, including All of a Sudden and Forever — multiple winners, multiple books. If you’d like one of those winners to be you, by the end of August 2024 either say so in the comments below or email me directly, and you’ll be in the running. (U.S. mailing addresses only.)

If you know another reader, family member, educator, or librarian who you think might appreciate a copy of All of a Sudden and Forever, won’t you please let them know, too?