The Anarchist’s Wife
In the summer of 1927, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts committed one of the most nefarious of legal injustices in the history of the United States. The arrest, conviction and execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti titillated and provoked a xenophobic nation much divided by the war in Europe and the Russian Revolution, the rising tide of organizing labor, and the increasing violence of socialism’s most ardent wing: the anarchists.
Margo Laurie’s novella explores this moment in time through the eyes of Sacco’s young wife, Rosa. She is an immigrant herself, a teenager when she marries Nicola. Their relationship seems to be one made in heaven. Rosa is bright and effusive; Nicola, totally devoted, is a man of limited education but with an inherent intelligence and drive to make the life of his family the best it can be.
In The Anarchist’s Wife, Rosa is telling her daughter Ines the story of her love affair with Nicola and of the double life he led as a family man and as a passionate believer in the rights of the working man. In 1920, a bank is robbed in Massachusetts, and two guards are shot to death. Nicola and Bartolomeo are arrested. Are they innocent of this crime? Scapegoats for the revenge-hungry elitist mob? Or are they guilty? Even Rosa isn’t one-hundred percent certain. Is there anything she and Nicola’s ardent fellow insurrectionists can do to prevent the inevitable?
Author Laurie’s thorough research is evident on every page as Rosa tries to live her life and raise her two children while Nicola is imprisoned. The tale isn’t over-sold or melodramatic but laid out simply and believably. A novella, The Anarchist’s Wife will make you want to delve into the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti even more.
