Essay
Author Fred Madeo Writes About His Novel
The Shout and the Avalanche:
The
Education of Billy Wonder
by Fred Madeo
Paperback, 195 pages, $ 20.99
ISBN: 1-4010-2780-6
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.
Caught in the web of their own lives, they were unaware of the events taking place in Europe, where a defeated Germany of twenty years earlier was rising out of the ashes, led by a little man named Adolph Hitler, who was pulling Germany out of the depression by building up its military forces. He became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 at the same time that Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president of the United States. By the end of 1938 his armies entered Czechoslovakia and the world trembled.
But not America. World War I and the depression had its populous pull its collective head, like a turtle, into its isolationist shell. Americans wanted jobs, economic security, and three squares a day. They were leery of getting involved with the problems overseas and, though they expressed dislike for the German chancellor, they wanted no part of getting sucked into what they saw as European quicksand. And there is where my novel starts: in October 1938 when German troops march into Czechoslovakia, and my protagonist, Billy Wonder 19 years old, learns, under the tutelage of four adults, how important it is to understand the world he lives in.
There is Max Greene, his World History teacher, dramatic, demanding, who
holds his students in thrall by his exciting presentations: "From his very first day with Mr. Greene, Billy fell under his spell. 'The name of the course,' said Max Greene after he introduced himself, is World History . His eye swept his new group of juniors. Only ignoramuses would call it World History! There are American History and English History, but there is no such thing as World History. The world doesn't have history, people have history; nations have history, you and I have history; the world does not have history.' " Billy Wonder is hooked on Max Greene.
On his new job as a messenger, Billy meets Joe Rafferty, a teamster. A loud and somewhat crude, outspoken Irishman, he challenges Billy Wonder almost mercilessly. At their first meeting, Joe Rafferty confronts the young messenger:
"Billy Wonder!" his Irish accent rang out, "what do ya think of the world we live in, eh?" Billy turned, flustered. "Ah," Rafferty went on, "ya never considered the nature of the world have ya? Tell me, messenger of the gods, how do ya see mankind? Is man good or evil, how say you, Billy Wonder, eh?" Billy resents and squirms under the teamster¹s provocations, but undergoes a benign tolerance of the Irishman.
van Sieverding, a broadcast commentator, hires Billy to do some limited filing of news clippings. He is calm, warm, of keen intellect, and from time to time shields Billy from from Rafferty. And of world events, he is also Billy's mentor. Spread out before them is a map of Europe:
"The commentator sat down and Billy took it as a hint to leave, but
Sieverding stayed him. 'It¹s you who are in danger, my young friend,
for if there is a war, it will be your generation bearing arms.' He bent
over to peer closely at the map as though it would reveal, like a crystal ball,
secrets yet unknown. 'Yes, yes,' he nodded, ORafferty is right, Dorothy
Thompson is our modern Cassandra.' "
Billy becomes smitten with Doris Palmer, a British journalist, who works
out of Sieverding¹s office and is introduced by Sieverding: "Billy, Doris
Palmer of the London Daily Chronicle." Her eyes were a bright, deep
chocolate, and she smiled. 'Pretty' flashed through his head as he went
about his task of filing clippings, wondering why he hadn¹t seen her before this."
But things happen to Billy while he is at his job. He and his sister witness panic in the Bronx streets. The theft of a diplomatic case inadvertently makes him a target of American Nazis known as the German-American Bund. He is assaulted in Brooklyn by a radical group known as the Christian Front. And while Billy hangs from a parachute at the World¹s Fair, a Christian Fronter takes aim.
Meanwhile, Hitler is poised to attack Poland.
—Fred Madeo
