THE BRINI BOY
BY JANE MCCULLOCH
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Some time ago I
came across an amazing story; of how one boy fought to save his friend from the
electric chair.
I originally wrote
this story as a screenplay. It seemed such an obvious candidate for a film I
sent it off to Working Title TV. They were interested and even got as far as
suggested casting with Robert Downey Jnr as Vanzetti; but
after a while the idea was dropped and I filed the script away. However, the
story continued to haunt me and three years ago I decided to write it as a
novel.
“The Brini Boy” was
published in May this year and has already received 5* reviews on Amazon on
both sides of the Atlantic.
The story – which
will be 100 years old in three years - deals with the events leading up to the
trial in 1920 of two Italian immigrants living near Boston Massachusetts, accused
of a hold-up and murder, and then, after the guilty verdict, the long fight to
save them from the electric chair. By a quirk of fate, the young Trando Brini
was with Vanzetti at the time of the crime and this starts for him a seven year
struggle to prove Vanzetti’s innocence, clear his name and get him freed. The
boy’s ordeal begins with a long cross examination in the witness box – and
then, after the guilty verdict, continues throughout Sacco and Vanzetti's seven
years of imprisonment which ends on death row.
Trando is a
brilliant young violinist and because of his actions in defending the accused
he becomes ‘an enemy of the American people’, not only is his music career put
in jeopardy but also his place at Harvard. It is a 'David and Goliath'
struggle, where one boy courageously takes on the American Justice system and
the Bostonian Establishment as well. He is so convinced of the truth of his
evidence he never gives up, in spite of all the threats and the bullying. His
fight continues to the end and he sees it through with extraordinary bravery,
integrity and determination. There is great tension and drama in Trando's story,
even a love story as well, and through the seven years of struggle we watch him
develop into an exceptional young man. In this true story of courage, bravery
and determination, we can more fully understand the America of the present, by
revisiting its turbulent past and it seems little has changed where fear and
unjust treatment of immigrants is concerned.
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