The Sacco-Vanzetti case has been the source of numerous novels, poems, and plays, almost all of them written to protest the xenophobia, legal corruption, and social injustice underlying the arrest and trials. The earliest of these is Upton Sinclair's Boston (1928). The protagonist of Sinclair's two-volume novel is Cornelia Thornwell, a member of the Boston upper class and, as the novel opens, the recent widow of the former governor of Massachusetts. The death of her husband frees the 60-year-old widow from the triple bonds of a loveless marriage, her mercenary children, and the stifling snobbery of Brahmin Boston. Under an assumed name, she moves into a working-class neighborhood where she meets Bartolomeo Vanzetti, depicted here as a humble, wise, saintly figure, but nonetheless a dedicated anarchist. With Vanzetti's arrest, Cornelia becomes actively involved in the formation of his defense, and consequently her identity is revealed.

The rest of the novel deals with Cornelia's education as she tries to apply the basic ethical principles she has subscribed to all her life to the social-political reality underlying the case. A critical moment occurs when the defense attorney tries to persuade her that she can save Vanzetti if she is willing to perjure herself and testify that he was with her at the time of the robbery. She refuses, but not without a painful self-examination of her motives and values. Boston is thus an ironic "coming of age" novel chronicling a grandmotherly woman's movement from innocence to knowledge. Cornelia's advanced age enables Sinclair to underscore her symbolic status: She represents 19th century America coming to grips with the corruption and injustice that had become an inescapable aspect of the nation's growth and power.

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