I believe I read it in 1969. That doesn’t mean that was the year it came out. It was a Reader's Digest Condensed Book. It was about 2 young boys in a large gas explosion in Texas. The older brother chronicles the aftermath with his brother having 3rd degree burns. He makes it so far then asks for a candy bar and it lowers his immune system and he dies. That’s all I can remember.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
Gone at 3:17: The Untold Story of the Worst School Disaster in American History
by David M. Brown, Michael Wereschagin
At 3:17 p.m. on March 18, 1937, a natural gas leak beneath the London Junior-Senior High School in the oil boomtown of New London, Texas, created a lethal mixture of gas and oxygen in the school s basement.