Spindle City

Fall River, Massachusetts, is celebrating a midsummer day in 1911 as its Cotton Centennial fills the streets with crowds and parades. Among the town's leading citizens sits Joseph Bartlett, watching the festivities from the parade stand while a stubborn toothache distracts him. Visiting dignitaries are in town, and the carnival has halted the mill city's usual routine.

Bartlett stands between the Yankee mill owners and the union leaders who oppose them. As a maverick among owners, he worries that New England's mills cannot survive competition from the non-union South. He lives with constant dread of walkouts and fires, and he knows his own wealth began with a fire that killed workers at the Cleveland Mill. The son of an immigrant, he now enjoys a privileged life he never sought.

Bartlett's household is under strain. His wife is gravely ill, and his sons, lost in the crowd, face difficult choices of their own. Meanwhile, the gap between wealthy and poor is pulled tight, pressing everyone toward a breaking point.

The novel moves between the mansions of the Highlands and the tenements of the Cogsworth slum. Its cast includes mill owners, anarchists, and immigrants, and its focus is on their relationships, loyalties, and fortunes as a mill town and a generation reach their final years of prosperity.