The Blast

San Francisco, 1916. The streets

roiling: pitched battles between radical workers and the henchmen of industrial

barons, and between a vibrant, largely Italian immigrant anarchist milieu and

the forces of state and church. All in the looming shadow of Europe's raging

war, and of a fierce struggle over whether the U.S. should commit its might,

and human fodder, to the slaughter in the trenches.



Into this maelstrom arrives Kate

Jameson, a novice envoy from Washington tasked to secretly investigate the

tenor of support for war entry among San Francisco's business elite. She's also

hoping to glimpse her wayward daughter, Maggie, whose last message to Kate had

come from there. And, too, she's seeking the ghost of her husband Jamey, who

fifteen years earlier had landed there upon his return, shattered, from his

part in the U.S. occupation of the Philippines.



Arriving back in the city at the

same moment is Baldo Cavanaugh, a Sicilian-Irish son of San Francisco whose militant

beliefs and special skills have led him time and again to the violent extremes of

the city's turbulent history. And who now must confront the doubts and demons of

his own character, which he'd sought to escape by fleeing the city three years

before.





This stunning tale

explores how these two seemingly disparate characters become engaged with the city's

and nation's turmoil, and with the complexities of their related pasts in

Boston, Dublin, London, Cuba, and the Philippines. A vivid picture of a city

and a moment, the novel brilliantly reveals the explosive admixture of the

deeply personal and the deeply political.