Boston: A Documentary Novel
Dec 2015 · Open Road Media
eBook
868
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn more
About this eBook
A wealthy dowager confronts the brutality of the class system and fights for justice in this dramatic account of the Sacco and Vanzetti case
With the publication of The Jungle in 1906, Upton Sinclair became the literary conscience of America. Two decades later, he brought his singular artistry and steadfast commitment to the cause of social equality to bear on the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists accused of armed robbery and murder. Boston, a “documentary novel” published one year after Sacco and Vanzetti were executed, brilliantly combines fact and fiction to expose the toxic atmosphere of paranoia, prejudice, and greed in which the two men were tried.
Recently widowed sixty-year-old Cornelia Thornwell abandons her Boston Brahmin family to take a factory job in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She witnesses the crushing poverty and heartless bigotry endured by immigrant laborers, and befriends the charismatic fishmonger Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a committed anarchist and atheist. When Vanzetti and his fellow countryman Nicola Sacco are arrested and charged with murder, Cornelia’s belief in the fairness of the American judicial system is shattered. Joining the public outcry heard from Boston to Buenos Aires, she demands a fair trial—but it is too late. As Sacco knew all too well: “They got us, they will kill us.”
This ebook has been authorized by the estate of Upton Sinclair.
With the publication of The Jungle in 1906, Upton Sinclair became the literary conscience of America. Two decades later, he brought his singular artistry and steadfast commitment to the cause of social equality to bear on the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists accused of armed robbery and murder. Boston, a “documentary novel” published one year after Sacco and Vanzetti were executed, brilliantly combines fact and fiction to expose the toxic atmosphere of paranoia, prejudice, and greed in which the two men were tried.
Recently widowed sixty-year-old Cornelia Thornwell abandons her Boston Brahmin family to take a factory job in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She witnesses the crushing poverty and heartless bigotry endured by immigrant laborers, and befriends the charismatic fishmonger Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a committed anarchist and atheist. When Vanzetti and his fellow countryman Nicola Sacco are arrested and charged with murder, Cornelia’s belief in the fairness of the American judicial system is shattered. Joining the public outcry heard from Boston to Buenos Aires, she demands a fair trial—but it is too late. As Sacco knew all too well: “They got us, they will kill us.”
This ebook has been authorized by the estate of Upton Sinclair.
About the author
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, activist, and politician whose novel The Jungle (1906) led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Born into an impoverished family in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair entered City College of New York five days before his fourteenth birthday. He wrote dime novels and articles for pulp magazines to pay for his tuition, and continued his writing career as a graduate student at Columbia University. To research The Jungle, he spent seven weeks working undercover in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. The book received great critical and commercial success, and Sinclair used the proceeds to start a utopian community in New Jersey. In 1915, he moved to California, where he founded the state’s ACLU chapter and became an influential political figure, running for governor as the Democratic nominee in 1934. Sinclair wrote close to one hundred books during his lifetime, including Oil! (1927), the inspiration for the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood; Boston (1928), a documentary novel revolving around the Sacco and Vanzetti case; The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism; and the eleven novels in the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lanny Budd series.
Rate this eBook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Centre instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
