Former Congressman Bob Steele on His Novel About Casino Gambling in CT

Former Connecticut Congressman Bob Steele will discuss his new novel, The Curse: Big-Time Gambling’s Seduction of a Small New England Town. It is set against the casino gambling explosion that hit southeastern Connecticut during the 1990s when two Indian tribes built the world’s two biggest gambling casinos in the southeastern corner of the state. The story begins with the Pequot War in 1637, then jumps 350 years as a Connecticut family becomes embroiled in a struggle to block a third casino that threatens the family’s town and ancestral home. Steele tells this from his vantage point of representing eastern Connecticut in Congress before the arrival of the two casinos (Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun). Currently, Connecticut’s casinos face the prospect of heavy new competition from New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and there is growing political pressure to legalize Internet gambling.

WNPR/CT Public Radio’s John Dankosky calls the novel “fascinating” and Connecticut author Martin Shapiro has described it as “compelling and timely… an epic story of history, money and politics that will make you wonder where America is headed.”

 

 

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