Love of Finished Years is set in the time leading up to and encompassing the First World War.
This era has always fascinated me and I think it is under-covered in literature and cinema, especially when compared with World War Two. Growing up, this always made me curious about World War One. I used to ask people what it was all about and never really got a satisfactory answer. It didn’t make sense to me and this inspired me to start studying both the war itself, and the world of that time.
What amazed me were the parallels between that time and our own. History, of course, tends to be that way. Some truths are universal, throughout time. Human nature is certainly a through-line across all eras and cultures. It is sometimes comically, often tragically, predictable.
World War One in many ways ended an era of world history and launched another. For the United States, it was the event that began our country’s involvement in foreign conflicts. With the hindsight of victory, it is easy to forget how controversial our involvement was in both World Wars. Whatever your viewpoint on America’s foreign policy—past and present—may be, it is fascinating to look at the politics around World War One, and the way it has shaped national and world policy ever since.
This novel is about an immigrant family, from a country—Germany—which was considered hostile to the United States. Their experience in the 1910s has parallels to the experiences of many immigrants in America today.
The setting of this novel was also during the time of women’s fight for suffrage, as well as fair and equal working conditions. The garment factory district in New York City was the epicenter of this struggle. There are two women’s marches in the novel, as well as a city-wide women’s strike. Specific issues have changed over a hundred years, but many parallels remain. We have made great progress as a nation, yet some of the same battles for equality are being fought today.
The 1910s, with its Great War, was a dark time in history. A generation was literally wiped out from Europe because of the hubris of world leaders. But that was also a time of great hope. From the ashes of war came great progress, especially in this country. It took dreamers, like Elsa, the protagonist of my novel, to believe that a better world was possible. We need dreamers like her in our own time, people with the boldness, each in their own quiet way, to work for a better world.