The Dyeing Room

Book excerpt: Spring - 1917. War is raging in Europe and America has just cast its lot against the German war machine. Back home, the nation is reeling with social strife: workers marching for their rights, immigrants demanding fair treatment, suffragettes clamoring for the vote. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, seventeen-year-old Jack Bernard has a new job at one of the city’s largest textile mills, hoping to save money for college. Meanwhile, his friend, Tom Wellington, appears to have taken control of his demons and set himself on a new course. Soon the lives of both young men, their families and friends, will be torn asunder by forces and events far beyond their control. The Dyeing Room, Robert T. McMaster’s second novel, is an absorbing blend of adventure, mystery, and romance populated with characters so life-like they seem to leap from the pages and materialize before our very eyes. Readers young and old will be captivated by this story from a century past, the world of our forebears, an era that, however distant, still speaks to us across the generations.