INTRODUCTION

 

The difference between a true story and a fiction one is this: a fictional story has an ending, but a true story does not. When we have read the last page of a fictional story, we know everything: there is nothing more to discover. In a true story, there is always more to find out, because we can never know it all.

People often say that real life is stranger than fiction. It can certainly be just as frightening – and sometimes much more worrying.

This is a true story of Karen Silkwood. It happened in the USA, where Karen lived and worked. The story begins with her death. Why does her story begin where it should end? Did anyone want her death? Why? What were they scared of? Did Karen Silkwood have anything important to tell us? Will we ever know what really happened? The questions go on and on, but there are no answers.

Her death is a mystery. Was it an accident? It’s the old, old question: “Did she fall, or was she pushed?” We don’t know. But somebody does. Somebody out there, in the real world, knows if her death was an accident, or if it was not. Somebody knows – somebody who is alive and well and living an ordinary life, somewhere in America, and who remembers what really happened…

 

JOYCE HANNAM

(the author of the story)

Joyce Hannam is an experienced teacher and lecturer. She has taught English in several European countries, including Greece, Spain, Turkey, and the Czech Republic. She now lives in York, in the north of England, and works mostly Japanese university students and business people from Germany, Italy, France, and Spain.

For her story about Karen Silkwood, she used information from books and from the well-known film. Karen Silkwood was a real person, who was born in 1946 and died in 1974, aged 28 years. There is still a mystery about her death in a car accident, and perhaps we will never know the real story of her death.