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, t's up to 12 year-old Katie Scully to earn a living for her poverty-stricken family.Cropping her hair, wearing her brother's clothes, Katie takes a job in the rough and tumble, boys-only world of the coal breaker. Bullied by the meanest boy in the breaker, Katie, aided by a young Greek immigrant named Leander,learns to fight back.

Soon Katie has worse things to worry about. Angry over dangerous conditions in the mines, Colorado's miners walk out on strike. Evicted from their homes, Katie and Leander's families live in canvas tents set up outside the town of Ludlow.Despite cold, hunger, and the worst blizzard in a century, the miners' union survives. The governor of Colorado orders State Guard troops sent to the region, supposedly to keep the peace. Instead, the Guard uses their power to terrorize the strikers and their familes.Even kids aren't safe, as Leander and Katie discover when they're captured, accusedof sabotage, and beaten. As the strike stretches on into its seventh month, the mine owners decide it must be broken at any cost. A company of Guardsmen is sent 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 State Guard officers claim the fire was an accident. Only Katie, hiding the night it happened, witnessedthe soldiers setting the fires. With a coroner's jury set to decide on the victims' cause of death, Katiefaces an agonizingdecision: keep quiet in fear of reprisals to her family, or step forward and tell the truth, hoping there is such a thing as justice?