IN PROGRESS

Currently in progress is Blackburn’s novel based upon the Colorado coal-mining wars which culminated in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. Tentatively entitled “The Door of the Sad People,” the novel focuses upon the lives of ordinary people –miners and their families, enslaved women, veterans of the Philippines War, tuberculosis victims --as viewed by “Tree,” a young westerner who has been violently banished from home after his father becomes entangled in the intrigues of a powerful New York financier. Part tragedy, part picaresque, “Sad People” explores the reality of working-class, mostly immigrant experiences as these come into conflict with the unrestrained powers of a ruling elite.