Picking up where Rhode Island's Founders left off Dr. Patrick T. Conley, Rhode Island's preeminent historian and president of the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame, takes us through the Ocean State's history from 1790 to 1860. Learn how Samuel Slater, the so-called Father of the Factor System, pioneered the making of modern Rhode Island, how Elizabeth Buffum Chace founded the Rhode Island Women's Suffrage Association and what political circumstances led Governor Thomas Wilson Dorr to the ...

The Providence River begins its journey from the confluence of the Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket Rivers, in the capital city from which the river takes its name. A short distance downstream, the Seekonk River joins with the Providence as they flow on toward the mouth of Narragansett Bay. The history of the Ocean State was made on the banks of this historic river. It was here that Roger Williams established the first settlement dedicated to religious liberty, Rochambeau's army made its fir...

In an era when immigration was at its peak, the Fabre Line offered the only transatlantic route to southern New England. One of its most important ports was in Providence, Rhode Island. Nearly eighty-four thousand immigrants were admitted to the country between the years 1911 and 1934. Almost one in nine of these individuals elected to settle in Rhode Island after landing in Providence, amounting to around eleven thousand new residents. Most of these immigrants were from Portugal and Italy...

Adam Albright had spent his entire life winning, or so he thought. He excelled in school, won recognition as an athlete, and basked in the sunshine of popularity, especially among women. He had succeeded as a lawyer and even more so as a lobbyist. All was going well in the popular estimation. However, a select few recognized that all his success lacked something, a soul perhaps or at least some concern for someone other than himself. Soon his world collapsed. His supposed seductions were r...

The two novellas in this collection both describe a world gone mad with a frenzied rush for profit and promotion, a world in which bureaucracy seemingly trumps all other considerations. The first novella, “So, This Is It,” finds its protagonist unable to find work anywhere except in the ever-expanding government bureaucracy. Reluctantly, he finds himself employed in the Office of the Word. Assigned to do the impossible, the protagonist struggles to find meaning in a world without a soul. T...

Pete and Mary find their humdrum life interrupted dramatically by a spirit from the past. All on the surface appears banal and excruciatingly normal, but this ordinary couple must grapple with questions that otherwise they would have conveniently and blithely ignored. The title suggests one of the key questions that Mary and Pete explore. How can an evening—a measure of time—co-exist with eternity? How does time—a measure of past, present and future co-exist with an everlasting now, an ete...

Imagine a world in which work is rare, pot and booze flow freely, and no one seems to have any real concerns—at least no one other than a few elites who run the New Way. Such a world may appear to have few drawbacks. After all, robots have relieved mankind of the tedium of menial jobs, and totally mechanized armies fight the wars in distant countries; even the infantry consists of robotic soldiers. No one is forced to do much of anything, and people are free to pursue their own desires. Ye...

Years after the death of their rst born son Sean, his memory still occupies the minds and souls of his parents, Ted and Kate. Both parents struggle to make sense of what they feel may be a meaningless death in a meaningless war. They know that life goes on and that they still have two other children to love and nurture. What will be their fate? They are growing up in the Digital Age, where progress in bio-engineering and AI is making a world of new possibilities. Still, the old problems ex...

The two tales portray some of the problems facing many American families: bipolar bosses, unemployment, cancer, the seemingly unending hustle for money, and adolescent children coping with the meaning of the puzzling adult world. In ‘67 Ford Mustangs: The Long Drives, the unemployed protagonist undergoes three journeys, including a literal trip to Hell and back. As he scours the country for ‘67 Mustangs to satisfy the fancies of an eccentric collector, he unintentionally comes across an ep...

Two families, one solidly middle-class American and the other undocumented Mexican immigrants, face an uncertain future. No ones job is safe, and no paycheck is ever guaranteed. They both live in a maelstrom of uncertainty. The rule of law has yielded to the flux of opportunism. While the OConnell family struggles with an arrogant boss and adolescent upheavals, the Riveras cope with fear of the cartels and worries over deportation and teenage missteps. Despite initial misgivings and differ...

BUFFY’S BURRITOS “Illegal immigration,” “undocumented workers”—Mike Leahy and many Americans have heard these terms every day, but for Mike, these phrases have existed mainly as vague abstractions. A chance meeting with an old high school classmate initiates a whole series of events that propel Mike past the nebulous world of abstraction into the very real and enigmatic world of undocumented workers—a world in which both businesses and governmental agencies can profit, a world in which the...

Our tale of the Grail opens in the decidedly austere domain of a university archive but then expands to include a journey to far more exotic locations in Switzerland, Scotland, Ireland, Cuba, and finally the United States.Unlike some accounts of the Grail, this one adheres to a vision of the Grail as something quite tangible and real that has the potential to transform lives, to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to comfort the weary. In this journey of discovery, an enigmatic financier fu...