When the Lights Go On Again: A Young Person's View of Life on the Home Front During WWII

Elaine West is a young girl growing up in Fresno, California in the wake of the Great Depression. While her family, like all families of the time, has struggled to make ends meet over the past few years, her life is generally happy and free from worry. Free, that is, until the attack on Hawaii's Pearl Harbor plunges the United States suddenly and unexpectedly into a global war. Now, the only thing standing between the enemy and Elaine's home city of Fresno, California is less than two hundred miles and a vast, unprotected, open sea. Written in the tradition of Johnny Tremain and Across Five Aprils, When the Lights Go On Again takes you back to California in the 1940s, depicting everyday life and the war that shaped it. Be there with Elaine as she grows up during the most destructive conflict the world has ever seen. See the lives of the people of Fresno during those dark years-- blackout drills, shortages, food and gasoline rationing. Meet the young men from throughout the nation who came through Fresno, headed for the battlefields of the Pacific. Witness a nation of immigrants harass and imprison their Japanese neighbors, casting their humanity aside amid the terrifying realities of war. Learn, as Elaine did, of such horrors as the Bataan Death March and the Holocaust. Watch the dawn of the atomic age. See all of this and more, through the eyes of a young girl who is quickly becoming a young woman as she tries desperately to make sense of it all.

Margaret Walters (principal author) was born in Fresno, California on December 7th, 1934. She worked for thirty seven years in public education, mostly as a teacher, in California, Illinois and Washington State. She and her husband Edward raised three children, including her co-author. Her interest in continuing to inform young people led her to write this book. Margaret and Edward are now retired and living in Las Cruces, New Mexico. An excerpt from this book, The Tea Set, was published in Serape XVIII, An Anthology of New Mexico Authors. Mark Walters (secondary author and editor) was born in Seattle, Washington. He holds a BA from the University of Washington, an MA from Carnegie Mellon University, and a MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh. He has worked as a teacher and a librarian, and is currently pursuing his PhD in Communications and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He found the information in this book fascinating and desired to make it available to others.