Night of the Burning Tents

       "A vivid account of one of the most shameful events in American labor history, told by the children who lived through it"

When her dad is killed in a mining accident, 12 year-old Katie Scully takes on the burden of supporting her family. Wearing her brother's clothes, she enters the rough and tumble, boys-only world of the coal breaker. Bullied by the meanest boy in the breaker, Katie, coached by a young Greek immigrant named Leander,  learns to fight back. Soon the breaker boys are caught up in the Great Coalfield Strike of 1913. Enraged over dangerous conditions in the mines, Colorado's miners form a union and walk out on strike. Evicted from their company-owned houses, the strikers and their families set up living quarters in canvas tents just outside the town of Ludlow.

Against all odds, the union survives, despite hunger, cold, the worst blizzard in Colorado history, and the harassment of a private army of machine gun-wielding thugs. When the State Militia is sent in to keep the peace, everyone hopes it will put an end to the violence. Instead, the soldiers use their power to terrorize the residents of the tent colony. As the strike stretches on, the mine owners decide the union must be broken at any cost. Guardsmen are ordered to destroy the tent city. Under cover of darkness, they torch the camp. Fourteen women and children are killed in the fire--an event that becomes known as the Ludlow Massacre.

The fire was an accident, claims the brutal commander of the Guard troop. Only Katie, hiding the night it happened, witnessed the soldiers setting the fires. With a coroner's jury set to decide on the victims' cause of death, Katie faces an agonizing decision: keep quiet in fear of reprisals to her family, or step forward and tell the truth, hoping to find justice for the victims.

"A riveting narrative of a little known chapter in American history" --ARC reviewer

"Vivid period details, strong characters, and a rip-roaring pace" --ARC reviewer   

"Thrilling--not a dull moment" --ARC reviewer