Shattered Peace : A Century of Silence
by Julie McDonald Zander
Genre: Historical Fiction
292 pages, St. Helens Press
"Let’s pray the tragedy that unfolded on the streets of Centralia in November 1919 are never forgotten ... and more importantly, never repeated." - Julie McDonald Zander
Colleen Holmes's grandma gifts her the family home in Centralia, Washington state. Colleen is a war veteran who lives with nightmares of the Iraqi war and struggles through it. While she accepts the gift and moves to Washington State from Colorado, she decides the two story house is too big and decides to redo the top floor. In the process, she finds the diary of her great great grandmother Bridget.
Zipping back to the first world war and its aftermath in America to the present day USA seamlessly, the author zeroes in on what is a little known incident to the outside world and probably to many young Americans themselves - the friction between Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW) who demanded better wages, working conditions and reasonable working hours for all American labourers. The IWW wanted to form a single union for all labourers. One of IWW's most important contributions to the labor movement and broader push of social justice was that, when founded, it was the only American union to welcome all workers, including women, immigrants, African Americans and Asians, into the same organization. They had no beef with the American veterans from WW1. The friction was ignited by the IWW members questioning why young Americans need to be sent abroad to die in foreign countries while the American vets feel they are belittled on hearing this. The politics of this leads to a clash in Centralia, Washington which led to deaths. Who were the other players who benefited from this friction by calling members of the IWW as communists and radicals, I will leave the reader to find out. How Colleen's story and her great-great grandfather's story are so similar is amazing.
The writing is amazing, crisp and well paced. It makes the reader wonder why even after 100 years, young Americans are still being sent to fight foreign wars and those who return alive, live with PTSD in USA today and feel unappreciated is still going on. This is an important book to read.
Do buy it here -Amazon
