A Short Story Walk Through The 20th Century

About the Book

The short fictional stories of this book represent a real walk through the 20th Century.  They start with stories generated through portraying the feelings and thoughts of young people experiencing mid-western, small town events during World War II in the 1940’s.  They continue using unique war time themes such as a money loving soldier from the east coast.  In some cases, as in the story “Bouquet”, the characters even have strong memories of the World War I period from 1914 to 1918.

The themes of the stories progress into the late 1940’s with an American expatriate, living in Europe, and then to the 1950’s with experiences of people involved with an irrigation project that subsequently changed the nature of eastern Washington from a dry sage brush covered desert into a green oasis.

Short stories covering the sixties and seventies reflect increased prosperity for many Americans, allowing them to participate in worldwide travel, exposing them to new cultures.  The characters of these stories involve individuals who are street artists of Paris, travelers in Europe and mountain climbers in Switzerland.  Another story about this period entitled, “My Bed Is Cold”, portrays a worldwide phenomenon of the century!  It is about the migration of people away from remote villages to bigger cities.

The Cold War world of spies, so prevalent from the 1950’s to about 1990, is represented in the story “Ladybug”.  The main character is a woman who, as a spy herself, helps to expose a worldwide network of spies.

A theme from the eighties shows unique insight into strange happenings in Alaska.  It involves that state’s intimacies with nature and its ever increasing environmental concerns.

Then we move by a love story into the thriving nineties with its huge business empires and globalization.  The main character and plot encompass a California business mogul and his global company.

Finally we end our walk through the century with the story “Ten Years Later”, in which an American Geologist goes to a former Russian Province.  In his travels and work there, he discovers the tremendous willpower and flexibility of those people who chose to cross the wall, so to speak, and become more western.

Each story is prefaced by an account which frames the story into its appropriate century setting.  Let’s take A Short Story Walk through the 20th Century!

About the Author

John Eke is a Geologist by training who, in the pursuit of his schooling and career, did extensive traveling, both foreign and domestically. The author also spent a year in France as a student. Many of the ideas for the fictional short stories of this book came about from these adventures.