Author Fred Madeo Writes About His Novel

When I began my novel, "The Shout and the Avalanche," I intended it to be about friendship and loyalty. It was not until I had completed several chapters that I realized that my overarching theme was anti-Semitism. The reason was simple: the events of America in 1939 were being shaped by Nazi Germany.

America and the world were gripped in a deep economic depression. By 1939 it showed signs of easing up, but they were not out of the woods yet. Not only had economic conditions shaken Americans who lost their jobs and had to stand on soup lines for sustenance, but also in the mid-thirties Mother Nature struck a devastating blow at the lives of farmers of the midwest. She gave them no rain. The earth was dried up; top soil had been torn away by the winds, and the bleached earth was barren. No crops, no cash, no way to pay the mortgage, so the banks took their land and the people were driven westward to look for work. John Steinbeck told their story in his great novel, "The Grapes of Wrath." Like a colony of ants the disinherited traveled westward on the highways, in search of sustenance, of relief from the hot and unyielding sun and winds.

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