World War I and 2021

My kids have spent a lot of time over the last few years with me telling them anecdotes or fun facts about World War I, except that the facts aren’t very fun and the anecdotes usually involve poison gas or dead bodies. Luckily for me, they’re pretty tough kids, but still…it doesn’t make for great dinner conversation. They’ve asked me, more than once, “Why World War I?”

I understand their confusion. As an American, our experience of that particular war was short-lived and not terribly influential. It was all but over by the time our troops got there and there wasn’t the patriotic war effort at home in the same way we remember Victory Gardens and Rosie the Riveter.

In fact, during World War I the situation here in the U.S. was far more complicated than most people know. A lot of people didn’t want to go to war, and when the U.S. declared, a lot of them got in big trouble for speaking out. There was significant prejudice against Germans and, then, Russians after the revolution, even though the U.S. was an ally! Also, there was a pandemic and significant terrorist activity from various anarchist and communist groups around the nation. The whole world probably felt like it was breaking apart.

And when I started this book, in March 2021, that was how I felt too. It’s how I still feel a lot of days. Yes, there’s nothing even close to the Western Front’s trench warfare - there never had been before and I hope never will be again - but it does feel like everywhere I look, things are malfunctioning. Everything from our roads to our international relationships seem too fragile, overworn. Like ice that is melting and just waiting to crack and drown us all.

And in the middle of all of that, my thought was, “What could one person possibly do?” Part of me was asking for myself, but part of me just wanted to explore the idea. Even if - even if - that person had supernatural, otherworldly powers. Even if they could get to the worst places and help the most - what could one person ever do against such systematic destruction. The inertia, the mindlessness of the bureaucratic decisions - how could anyone stand a chance against that?

And so, Addy was born. She was the avatar for all the hope and fierceness I held in the midst of a world that felt full of fear and despair. I like to think that she became more than that, but throwing a strong-minded woman in to the middle of hell on earth seemed like a good place to start asking the question, “What should we do when the world seems determined to break into a thousand pieces?”