The Trial of Bat Shea

TROY, N.Y., 1894—Boss Edward Murphy, a United States Senator, rules this upstate mill city from his brewery. Thugs and repeaters emerge from ward saloons on election day to stuff ballot boxes and keep Murphy’s men in office. When a posse of vigilantes turns out to stop the voting fraud, a young industrialist is gunned down.

The murder of Robert Ross sparks an explosive backlash. Pious congregations cry for vengeance. Suffragettes demand the woman’s vote to reform elections. A secret society fastens on the murder to topple Murphy and seize power. Stepping from the shadows, shrewd Yankee lawyer Frank Black accuses Bartholomew Shea of the crime, and then guides community outrage into channels of the criminal law. But did Shea pull the fatal trigger?

From elegant mansions to immigrant slums, this drama of ambition and betrayal, of bigotry and oppression plays against the backdrop of industrial America while the Victorian age darkens.

THE TRIAL OF BAT SHEA recounts how a saloon thug set out to steal an election, and how a methodical, flag-waving mob then twisted the law to extract the last full measure of revenge, a life for a life, in the name of truth and justice.

THE TRIAL OF BAT SHEA first appeared as excerpts in The Sunday Record, Troy, New York, May 29 – September 25, 1977. Diamond Rock Publishing Co. released a hardcover edition in 1994. An updated version was released in Kindle in 2011 and in paperback in 2012. Purchase via Amazon.

For more information about the history, theatrical versions and music of THE TRIAL OF BAT SHEA, visit: BatShea.com