Star Phoenix, Saskatoon, Canada
May 20 2006

Young protagonist required to address own social blindness

Katie Ewards, The StarPhoenix
Published: Saturday, May 20, 2006

The foreword to Shattered, Eric Walters’s new book for young readers,
is written by Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire. This is appropriate,
since Shattered was inspired by Dallaire and his own book, Shake
Hands with the Devil. In the foreword, Dallaire grimly points out the
fact that war veterans with physical injuries are venerated as
heroes, but soldiers who return with psychological wounds are often
ignored and marginalized.

Shattered begins with Ian, the 15-year-old protagonist, meeting just
such a man: a former soldier, now homeless. When Ian first passes
Sarge in a park, he does not see the retired soldier at all. When
Sarge makes himself known, Ian is still subject to blindness of a
sort: the teenager writes the older man off as paranoid and
worthless. His assumptions are challenged first when Sarge rescues
him from a mugging, and then again when he begins to unearth Sarge’s
past as a UN Peacekeeper. But Sarge is dismayed to discover Ian’s
lack of education about the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Blindness is a theme in this book.

At the beginning, Ian lives in a shiny, upper-class bubble. His work
in a soup kitchen, required by his civics class, becomes an
eye-opening experience when he is taken on a tour of the alleys and
dumpsters of his city: homeless people are everywhere, unseen and
unheard. Likewise, Canada has turned a deliberate blind eye toward
Rwanda and the horrifying events which unfolded there.

As Ian explores the underbelly of the city and learns the appalling
history of the failed UN mission in Rwanda, his protective bubble
falls to pieces. He begins to obsess — not only over the Rwandan
genocide, but also those of Armenia, Cambodia, and Yugoslavia, as
well as the Holocaust of the Second World War and the “disappeared”
in Guatemala. Walters’s writing provides enough detail for these
tragedies to be memorable, but is simultaneously abstract enough to
avoid causing nightmares.

A book about homelessness and genocide inevitably threatens to become
too depressing to read. Walters avoids this trap by focusing on
individuals who affect change. He exposes a dark abyss of tragedy,
but concentrates on the light of heroism: the man who runs the soup
kitchen saves lives, just as shoemakers did in Guatemala and
Peacekeepers did in Rwanda.

But not everyone can be rescued. Will Ian save Sarge?

Shattered deals with weighty issues, but presents them in a way that
will open young readers’ eyes. It inspires readers to shatter their
own bubbles and take action.

Edwards is a freelance writer.