Stephen Puleo's The Dark Tide

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The “Dark Tide” by Stephen Puleo was the first book to tell the full story of “The Great Boston Molasses Flood.” The reason he wrote the nonfiction novel was to give the full accounting of what happened in the historical context. He used court records, newspaper accounts, and files from the fire department. He recrafted the tale about what actually happened with painstaking and terrifying details of those affected. Puleo creates a new way to view the dreadful catastrophe as something that changed Boston (“Dark Tide”). Puleo has written other books about Boston but none of the same subject. There have not been other books written about the Molasses Flood during the time Puleo wrote it and little information has been written about for this topic. Newspaper retrospectives and a few magazine articles were written about it through the years as well. Fiction books for children talked about molasses as something adventurous and fun but did not depict the actual tragedy of the event. This pushed him to write the book because he …show more content…

The author wanted to make sure everyone knew what exactly happened before and after the event (Puleo ix). Those who died were not really noticed or appreciated because most of them were immigrants with jobs as a laborer, teamster, driver, blacksmith, or unemployed. He made sure that every single person that passed would be known by their name, age, and job (Puleo 239). As the author talks about what happened with the molasses flood, he also covers the changes from Prohibition, immigration, World War I, the role big businesses have, and the anarchist movement. Overall, he wants to tell his readers that ordinary people have the courage and can be heroes too ( “Dark Tide”). The author explains “The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919” was more than just a disaster, but rather a decade-spanning heroic tale (Puleo

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