Debut Novel

Fireworks
of the Fallen

A Novel
Scroll — the record continues
Fireworks of the Fallen — book cover

What if bearing witness was the only weapon left?

On Liberation Day, the fireworks over a dozen American cities are not a celebration. They are an attack — and fourteen-year-old Alex Harmon's family will spend the next three years learning exactly how far a government will go to bury that truth.

As her father, a veteran still carrying his own war, leads their family north across the Canadian border, Alex keeps the one record no one can redact: her journal. What she and her brothers uncover — a buried DIA warning, a chain of command that leads to the White House itself — becomes the evidence a fractured country needs and the target that could get them all killed.

Fireworks of the Fallen is a novel about a family that chooses to remember when remembering is dangerous, and about the long, unglamorous work of making the truth impossible to ignore.

For readers of The Handmaid's Tale and 1984 — a political thriller built around one family's refusal to look away.

Sandra R. Maniaci

Sandra R. Maniaci

Sandra R. Maniaci spent her career as an educator before turning to fiction full-time. Fireworks of the Fallen is her debut novel.

Her work returns again and again to justice, memory, and what people owe each other when institutions fail them — themes shaped by years spent watching young people learn how the world actually works, one classroom at a time.

Still writing it down

Two more records currently in progress.

In Progress

The Stolen Life

A historical literary suspense novel — Sandra's second book, currently being drafted.

In Preparation

Soul Matchers, Inc.

A posthumous paranormal romance, written by a late family member and being prepared for publication as a tribute.

Journal — the record

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