Uprising (novel)
Uprising is a novel for young people written by Margaret Peterson Haddix and published by Simon & Schuster in September 2007.
Plot
Bella, newly arrived in New York City from Italy, has come to America to earn money for her family. After the death of her father, she, her mother and her brothers have not been able to buy food. She gets a job at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. There, along with 500 other immigrants, she works long hours at a grueling job under terrible conditions. Yetta, a coworker from Russia, has been crusading for a trade union. When factory conditions worsen, workers rise up in a strike. Wealthy Jane learns of the workers and becomes involved with their cause.
Bella and Yetta are at work and Jane is visiting the factory on March 25, 1911, when a spark ignites piles of cloth 125 layers thick, being ready to use when they come back to work on the following Monday, and the building is engulfed in fire, leading to one of the worst workplace disasters in history (the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire). In the end, only one of the girls (Bella) lives. Her other friend (Jane) was burned alive and other friend (Yetta) jumped from the eighth floor, with her lover Jacob, through the nets at the bottom and died. Bella was the only one to survive by going onto the roof and climbing to a nearby building and out their exit. Bella was the only one to live and will now be able to tell of the story of her friends, to her two daughters (Yetta and Jane) the terrible occurrences of March 25, 1911.