Horrors of History
The fourth book in the Horrors of History historical fiction series recounts the untold story of the Ludlow Massacre.
Colorado, 1914. A tent colony of coal miners has been on strike for seven months, bargaining for fair wages and safer working conditions. The Snyder family—Eleven-year-old Frank, his parents, and his four siblings—are doing their best to hold firm with their fellow strikers in the face of threats from the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. But the simmering threat of violence from the Colorado National Guard and the company strike-breakers grows ever more oppressive. Something terrible is coming soon.
On April 20, 1914, gunfire breaks out in a Colorado tent colony of coal miners on strike. Men, women, and children run for their lives or cower in crude dirt cellars under their tents. In a single day of chaos, six strikers, two women, ten children, and two babies die. These are the facts. But why did it happen? What was it like to be there?More than one hundred years ago, on April 20, 1914, a violent labor struggle erupted at the Ludlow, Colorado, coal mine. Earlier, after Greek immigrant miners struck Colorado Fuel & Iron Company for better working conditions and higher wages, they and their families were evicted from company housing. Now, on Easter Sunday, the Colorado National Guard militia is "itching for a fight," as are some of the miners. It's almost dark when shots ring out over the tent city. With panic running rampant and children screaming everywhere, chaos reigns. Some wives and children head to perceived safety, while others hunker down in dirt cellars. Events of the day move along in fairly short snippets, following particular individuals or families. It's almost as if readers are watching movie shorts yet are conscious of all the action. This fictional account of an actual event is written in a gripping narrative style and accompanied by archival black-and-white photographs. The epilogue and author's note give facts, figures, and sources for this intriguing title in the Horrors of History series.
-Booklist
Anderson, author of several titles in the "Horrors of History" series, brings another tragedy to light. The author novelizes the true massacre at Ludlow, a camp of striking coal miners in Colorado. It is Easter season, 1914, and the miners, the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, and the Colorado National Guard, are at a standstill. The strikers find they prefer their tent life to the difficulties of living in the company town, and the company and the National Guard have grown weary of the confrontation. A company wife sends a letter to the Guard, suggesting that the miners have kidnapped her husband because he refused to strike with them. The Guard takes this as an excuse to raid the camp, and after days of fruitless conversation, gunfire rains down. Families flee and hide. Men try to stand and fight. Lives are lost, and justice seems far away. The massacre is a true tragedy that may interest those who read historical fiction, but middle school students will need more context about what it meant to be a "company man" and a miner in order to understand the strike and to even begin to comprehend the shoot-out. VERDICT The plethora of back matter and other nonfiction elements make the novel a good fit for classroom literature circles or as part of a library booklist or display about mining life.
-School Library Journal
In this latest novel in his Horrors of History series, Anderson writes about a little-known incident from U.S. labor history, the Ludlow Massacre that took place in southern Colorado in April, 1914. It was the culmination of a strike that forced miners and their families to spend months living in a cluster of tents, sometimes in cellars dug to shelter mothers and children from gunfire. The final clash between coal miners and Colorado national guardsmen claimed nineteen lives, including strike leader Louis Tikas, militiaman Pvt. Alfred Martin, twelve-year-old Frank Snyder who was shot in the back of the head, and two women and eleven of their children who suffocated in the cellar beneath a burned-out tent. All are characters included in the novel.
Anderson switches between the strikers’ and guardsmen’s points of view, building suspense and elucidating some of the causes behind this gruesome event, though his decision to leave the story in Ludlow limits readers’ understanding of more complex political and economic forces. Anderson draws characters quickly, and while it may be a little too easy to cheer for the strikers and hiss at the guardsmen, readers will respond to them. As an added bonus, Anderson includes twenty-one historical photographs, including the haunting cover photo of a boy the right age to be Frank Snyder. An author’s note explains Anderson’s research and the challenges he faced in balancing fact and fiction. The book is a worthy complement to the many books about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, especially for male readers.
-VOYA MagazineT. Neill Anderson is fascinated—and often horrified—by the countless true tales of America’s past stories. The Horrors of History series are his first books for young readers. He lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York.Tuesday, April 21, 1914
The sun rose, casting gauzy shards of light over the smoldering ruins of the Ludlow tent colony. For the past seven months, the camp had been home to more than a thousand people, but now it was in ashes. Most of the tents had been reduced to skeletal remains: charred frames, mangled bedsteads, and coiled springs. Some tents still burned; laundry still hung from a clothesline. Flocks of chickens clucked, and a wet, soot-covered Saint Bernard, bleeding from one ear, skulked down one of the paths between tents. Its tail smacked against the charred frame of a baby carriage as it passed.
Militiamen moved among the few tents that remained standing, looting what few valuables they could find: silverware, bicycles, bedding, tools, and jewelry. A series of rifle shots rang out from the hills outside the camp, and the militiamen dropped to the ground. A few moments later the shooting stopped, and they returned to their work, dousing the tents with coal oil and setting them aflame.
At the front of the colony, in the second row from the road, a disheveled woman gasped as she crawled out from under the floorboards of a burnt tent—only the frame of it remained. She clambered out of one of the many pits that had been dug under the tents as hiding places for the colony’s women and children. Dazed and coughing, she looked up and saw the militiamen scouring some tents nearby. She dashed in the opposite direction, toward the arroyo, covering her head for fear of being shot. One of the militiamen caught sight of the woman and set out after her.
“Please!” she shouted, waving her hands above her head. “My children! My children!”
The man laughed and stopped in his tracks, peering into the pit she had just vacated. “Your children better scat out of here like their mama,” he shouted after her. “This is our camp now.”
She fled, skirting two bodies lying on the ground. Shielding her eyes from the wreckage of the camp, she continued south and escaped the scorched colony.
The militiaman stood at the dark mouth of the underground hideaway as two of his fellow militiamen approached.
“I’m sure she wasn’t the only one in there,” he said. “Shall we see?”
“After you,” one of them replied.
He slowly stepped down into the pit and shone his torch in front of him. On the second step he stopped and sucked in his breath.
On the dirt floor in front of him was a jumble of charred clothing and the twisted, lifeless bodies of two women and almost a dozen children.
Colorado, 1914. A tent colony of coal miners has been on strike for seven months, bargaining for fair wages and safer working conditions. The Snyder family—Eleven-year-old Frank, his parents, and his four siblings—are doing their best to hold firm with their fellow strikers in the face of threats from the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. But the simmering threat of violence from the Colorado National Guard and the company strike-breakers grows ever more oppressive. Something terrible is coming soon.
On April 20, 1914, gunfire breaks out in a Colorado tent colony of coal miners on strike. Men, women, and children run for their lives or cower in crude dirt cellars under their tents. In a single day of chaos, six strikers, two women, ten children, and two babies die. These are the facts. But why did it happen? What was it like to be there?More than one hundred years ago, on April 20, 1914, a violent labor struggle erupted at the Ludlow, Colorado, coal mine. Earlier, after Greek immigrant miners struck Colorado Fuel & Iron Company for better working conditions and higher wages, they and their families were evicted from company housing. Now, on Easter Sunday, the Colorado National Guard militia is "itching for a fight," as are some of the miners. It's almost dark when shots ring out over the tent city. With panic running rampant and children screaming everywhere, chaos reigns. Some wives and children head to perceived safety, while others hunker down in dirt cellars. Events of the day move along in fairly short snippets, following particular individuals or families. It's almost as if readers are watching movie shorts yet are conscious of all the action. This fictional account of an actual event is written in a gripping narrative style and accompanied by archival black-and-white photographs. The epilogue and author's note give facts, figures, and sources for this intriguing title in the Horrors of History series.
-Booklist
Anderson, author of several titles in the "Horrors of History" series, brings another tragedy to light. The author novelizes the true massacre at Ludlow, a camp of striking coal miners in Colorado. It is Easter season, 1914, and the miners, the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, and the Colorado National Guard, are at a standstill. The strikers find they prefer their tent life to the difficulties of living in the company town, and the company and the National Guard have grown weary of the confrontation. A company wife sends a letter to the Guard, suggesting that the miners have kidnapped her husband because he refused to strike with them. The Guard takes this as an excuse to raid the camp, and after days of fruitless conversation, gunfire rains down. Families flee and hide. Men try to stand and fight. Lives are lost, and justice seems far away. The massacre is a true tragedy that may interest those who read historical fiction, but middle school students will need more context about what it meant to be a "company man" and a miner in order to understand the strike and to even begin to comprehend the shoot-out. VERDICT The plethora of back matter and other nonfiction elements make the novel a good fit for classroom literature circles or as part of a library booklist or display about mining life.
-School Library Journal
In this latest novel in his Horrors of History series, Anderson writes about a little-known incident from U.S. labor history, the Ludlow Massacre that took place in southern Colorado in April, 1914. It was the culmination of a strike that forced miners and their families to spend months living in a cluster of tents, sometimes in cellars dug to shelter mothers and children from gunfire. The final clash between coal miners and Colorado national guardsmen claimed nineteen lives, including strike leader Louis Tikas, militiaman Pvt. Alfred Martin, twelve-year-old Frank Snyder who was shot in the back of the head, and two women and eleven of their children who suffocated in the cellar beneath a burned-out tent. All are characters included in the novel.
Anderson switches between the strikers’ and guardsmen’s points of view, building suspense and elucidating some of the causes behind this gruesome event, though his decision to leave the story in Ludlow limits readers’ understanding of more complex political and economic forces. Anderson draws characters quickly, and while it may be a little too easy to cheer for the strikers and hiss at the guardsmen, readers will respond to them. As an added bonus, Anderson includes twenty-one historical photographs, including the haunting cover photo of a boy the right age to be Frank Snyder. An author’s note explains Anderson’s research and the challenges he faced in balancing fact and fiction. The book is a worthy complement to the many books about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, especially for male readers.
-VOYA MagazineT. Neill Anderson is fascinated—and often horrified—by the countless true tales of America’s past stories. The Horrors of History series are his first books for young readers. He lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York.Tuesday, April 21, 1914
The sun rose, casting gauzy shards of light over the smoldering ruins of the Ludlow tent colony. For the past seven months, the camp had been home to more than a thousand people, but now it was in ashes. Most of the tents had been reduced to skeletal remains: charred frames, mangled bedsteads, and coiled springs. Some tents still burned; laundry still hung from a clothesline. Flocks of chickens clucked, and a wet, soot-covered Saint Bernard, bleeding from one ear, skulked down one of the paths between tents. Its tail smacked against the charred frame of a baby carriage as it passed.
Militiamen moved among the few tents that remained standing, looting what few valuables they could find: silverware, bicycles, bedding, tools, and jewelry. A series of rifle shots rang out from the hills outside the camp, and the militiamen dropped to the ground. A few moments later the shooting stopped, and they returned to their work, dousing the tents with coal oil and setting them aflame.
At the front of the colony, in the second row from the road, a disheveled woman gasped as she crawled out from under the floorboards of a burnt tent—only the frame of it remained. She clambered out of one of the many pits that had been dug under the tents as hiding places for the colony’s women and children. Dazed and coughing, she looked up and saw the militiamen scouring some tents nearby. She dashed in the opposite direction, toward the arroyo, covering her head for fear of being shot. One of the militiamen caught sight of the woman and set out after her.
“Please!” she shouted, waving her hands above her head. “My children! My children!”
The man laughed and stopped in his tracks, peering into the pit she had just vacated. “Your children better scat out of here like their mama,” he shouted after her. “This is our camp now.”
She fled, skirting two bodies lying on the ground. Shielding her eyes from the wreckage of the camp, she continued south and escaped the scorched colony.
The militiaman stood at the dark mouth of the underground hideaway as two of his fellow militiamen approached.
“I’m sure she wasn’t the only one in there,” he said. “Shall we see?”
“After you,” one of them replied.
He slowly stepped down into the pit and shone his torch in front of him. On the second step he stopped and sucked in his breath.
On the dirt floor in front of him was a jumble of charred clothing and the twisted, lifeless bodies of two women and almost a dozen children.
PUBLISHER:
Charlesbridge
ISBN-10:
1580895204
ISBN-13:
9781580895200
BINDING:
Hardback
BOOK DIMENSIONS:
Dimensions: 6.5000(W) x Dimensions: 9.2500(H) x Dimensions: 0.6600(D)