Ted Baldwin's "Shadows" series of novels is a compelling story about people with haunting as well as hopeful struggles in an America conflicted and divided by the ideal "all men are created equal" and the reality of America's struggles with equality. First book in the series, Shadows of Things That Were, begins in that brittle time between the Great War and the Great Depression. The world was lost. Not the earth, or the planet, or the globe. The world. Classes crashed, empires passed; raw new empires were being built. Nobody knew who they were or how to react, except the very poor, for whom life had not changed, and the very rich, who just got richer. But nothing stays the same. The Great Depression and WWII turned America inside out and created shadows of new freedoms and opportunities for America's Black population. Luke Powers grew up a Black American through all this. He experienced the prejudice and horror of being Black in the Jim Crow south, the brotherhood and terror of fighting in WWII, and the ultimate hope that post-war changes in America might give his people the opportunity to achieve the dignity and societal equality they deserved. This story is both troubling and inspiring with strong characters and action you will find leaving you wanting more.