Beasts of the Blackstone

In Beasts of the Blackstone, Silveri draws on his training in the Magical Realism of the true masters and his field research to make the brief canal era come alive with yellow sleeping dust, bleeding trees, headbands of fireflies and frightening creatures. Woven into parallel love stories are such important themes as: discrimination against women and Irish laborers, child labor, poor mill working conditions, the American Revolution, and the origins of the Industrial Revolution. Caught in the struggle between nature and modernization, the novel chronicles the victories and failures of the memorable characters of the Blackstone Valley and the canal that connected the cities of Worcester and Providence in the 1800s. Beasts of the Blackstone is set in a time when the Blackstone River was still beautiful and wild, but was being reshaped for the canal and the mills, and was about to make the ultimate sacrifice for the Industrial Revolution. At the intersection of justice and revenge, the uniquely New England novel ends with a flourish on All Hallows' Eve.