Sinclair worked from a passionate conviction that the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti constituted "the most shocking crime that has been committed in American history since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln" and a belief that "It will empoison our public life for a generation.

Opponents of Sinclair's politics contend that his failure to adapt Moore's judgment in the novel constitutes a betrayal of his documentary claims.

"So you see that in the end I don't really know any more about the thing than I did in the beginning, and can only take my stand as I did in "Boston", upon the thesis that men should not be executed upon anybody's rumors.

"[7] He expanded on the situation in a letter:[10] A detailed analysis of Sinclair's "investigative method" cites a number of questionable assertions, but concludes that in Boston "one discovers a fidelity to the factual record which is seldom met with in historical novels.

"[11] Sinclair met with attorneys in New York City to make final changes to the text to allay their fears of libel suits.

[a] When the Committee named John B. Oliver's Victim and Victor instead, Sinclair denounced the selection in a widely distributed letter that pointed out how that novel was as argumentative as Boston only for a more respectable cause.

"[20] Though Boston is "fifty percent pamphlet," Sinclair's "mingling of actual and fictitious characters...has brought the historical novel up to date, and created a new form of realism.

"One suspects that the patently biased comment of the author weakens rather than strengthens his case, and that greater artfulness in presenting the facts might have brought the disinterested or disaffected reader into more active sympathy with his viewpoint.

"[22] Though allowing that some readers will be irritated by Sinclair's broad attack on private property, this critic concluded that "whatever the reaction to the doctrine it sets forth, no one can doubt the eloquence of the plea.

[24] The New York Times, normally quite critical, praised it apart from its politics as "a literary achievement...wrought into a narrative on the heroic scale with form and coherence," demonstrating "a craftsmanship in the technique of the novel that the author has seldom displayed before.

"[25] Others voicing enthusiasm included his sometime political adversary Lewis Mumford ("it has the finality of truth and art") and Arthur Conan Doyle ("the Zola of America").

She boards with the Brini family and becomes friends with their other boarder, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, an Italian immigrant ditch digger, atheist, anarchist, and pacifist.

She first thinks his political beliefs naive, "a dreamer of dreams, so simple of mind as to have no conception of the odds against him," (56) especially his opposition to reformers and all organizations, even unions.

Chapter 3: Dago Red Cornelia participates in the strike, learns how the police work for the plant's management and attack picketers.

"Little by little, Cornelia came to understand the type of idealist-fanatic, which could be gentle as a child in all personal relationships, but fierce and dangerous when roused by social wrong."

In reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution, "city policemen, federal secret agents, and an army of spies and informers" (149) wage a violent and illegal campaign on behalf of people of property.

Chapter 6: White Terror Cornelia's sons-in-law, Henry Cabot Winters and Rupert Alvin, lie to her about their manipulations to put Walker out of business.

Cornelia is dismayed to hear how Betty is not fazed to imagine Vanzetti in a gunfight with the police: "Where had she acquired that matter-of-fact smile, discussing the mad idea of resisting arrest?"

News reaches Cornelia in Italy with Betty, her suitor Joe Randall, an American social democrat, and a French communist named Pierre Leon.

In a long discussion of political philosophy, Pierre warns that he has known anarchists to be capable of violence, making his point to Cornelia by citing John Brown.

When Cornelia's grandson Josiah is blackmailed for sexual misbehavior, the family's history of secret affairs is discussed along with similar behavior on the part of Boston's ruling elite and occasional bribes.

(365) The narrator's voice proposes that by adhering to her principles she hopes to maintain: "your exclusiveness, your idea that you were something special, apart from the harsh, rough world—in short that you were 'Boston'!"

(463) When Betty announces that Joe's divorce is final and they plan to wed, Cornelia weeps, pretending she is happy for the couple, but her tears reflect the evening's arguments.

Chapter 16: The Law's Delay Jerry Walker's case against the banking establishment takes place in the same Dedham courtroom and lasts a year.

Managing the appeal, Rupert Arvin analyzes social connections to members of the Supreme Judicial Court through club memberships and personal ties, nothing crude.

Chapter 18: The Supersalesman The focus is now on Governor Fuller, a man "cold as marble, utterly selfish," (542) who can issue pardons or commute sentences.

(547) Cornelia decides to campaign behind the scenes to get Fuller to appoint a commission to review the case on his behalf, working through her upper class connections to get the Episcopal bishop to make the suggestion.

On Sunday, August 21, thousands gather on Boston Common and there are scenes of disorder, but people of note are not arrested Supreme Court Justices Homes and Brandeis decline to intervene.

On Monday, with executions scheduled for midnight, a protest of the well known and elite produces arrests, including Edna St. Vincent Millay as well as Betty and Joe, who give statements to the press.

Winters tells her that Fuller's decision is based on word that a drunken anarchist revealed that Sacco was in the car used at Braintree and Vanzetti knew about the robbery in advance.