Nobody Starts With a Blank Slate: an Interview with John Sayles

John Sayles at the Miami International Book Fair. Photo: Rodrigo Fernández. CC BY-SA 3.0

The novels of John Sayles encompass a wide swath of American history. Since the wide swath of American history is replete with one injustice after another, those are front and center in Sayles’s fiction.

Crucible, his latest novel, is set in the tumultuous, violent Detroit of the 1920s to World War II. It is a mix of real figures—including Henry Ford, Diego Rivera, Joe Louis, and Ford’s ruthless...