Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | FICTION BAK | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
At the height of the Civil War, what begins with strong words and a few broken bottles will, over the course of five days, escalate into the worst urban conflagration in American history. Hundreds of thousands of poor Irish immigrants smolder with resentment against a war and a president that have cost them so many of their young men. When word spreads throughout New York's immigrant wards that a military draft is about to be implemented -- a draft from which any rich man's son with $300 can buy an exemption -- trouble begins to spill into the streets.
Down in the waterfront slum of Paradise Alley, three women -- Deirdre Dolan O'Kane, Ruth Dove, and Maddy Boyle -- struggle with their private fears as they wait for the storm to descend on them. Deirdre, whose lace-curtain sensibilities have always kept her at arm's length from her neighbors, is devastated by the discovery that her husband, Tom, has been wounded at Gettysburg. In her desperation, Deirdre must turn for aid and comfort to Ruth, a woman she has always judged as morally depraved.
Ruth, too, has been cut off from her husband, Billy Dove, an ex-slave. At dawn he set out for the Colored Orphans' Asylum uptown, to collect his last wages. But he has not returned by day's end, or by the next morning. In the meantime, Ruth has learned that dozens of black men and women have been lynched or beaten by rioters.
She begins to fear the worst, not just for Billy, but for herself and their children, too -- because she now knows that he is coming. He is Dangerous Johnny Dolan, Deirdre's estranged brother, who after fourteen years' exile has returned to New York. Years before, it was Johnny who saved Ruth from the famine in Ireland, who arranged for her steerage passage from Dublin to New York -- and who beat her mercilessly until she arranged to have him sent away for murder.
Even as the riot builds toward its violent climax, Dolan searches relentlessly for Ruth and Deirdre, carried along by the unruly mob. In the end, these remarkable women have nothing but one another to rely on as they seek to protect their homes and families from the brutality of a city -- and a nation -- gone mad. Paradise Alley a story of race and hatred, of love and war, of risk and dauntless courage.
Author Notes
Kevin Baker was born in August 1958, in Englewood, New Jersey and grew up in Rockport, Massachusetts. He graduated from Columbia University in New York City in 1980. He began his writing career directly after graduation.
His first novel, Sometimes You See It Coming, based loosely on the life of Ty Cobb, was published in hardcover in 1993 and in paperback by HarperPaperbacks in the spring of 2003. Dreamland, part of BakerÂs New York City of Fire trilogy, was published by HarperCollins in 1999, and in paperback the following year. Paradise Alley was published by HarperCollins in 2002.
Kevin was the chief historical researcher on Harold Evans' best-selling history, The American Century, published in 1999. He currently writes the monthly "In the News" column for American Heritage magazine, and has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Frankfurter Rundschau, HarperÂs magazine, Talk, and The Industry Standard.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In his second New York novel (after Dreamland), Baker takes a grisly event-the 1863 Civil War draft riots-and crafts a terrifying, human story bursting with all the calamity, brutality and power of the riots themselves, which may have been the worst civic disturbance in U.S. history. Baker, an American Heritage writer, bases his work largely on historic events-Lincoln's announcement of the draft law did in fact propel thousands of New Yorkers, mainly Irish, to burn and loot the city and murder hundreds of innocents. The book follows the difficult lives of Ruth, Deirdre and Maddy, three women living on Paradise Alley, a dingy Lower East Side passageway, during the five days of riots. Each chapter alternates among many voices, however; in addition to the women, Baker speaks through a New York Tribune reporter, an escaped slave, an immigrant boxer turned criminal, an army private, a volunteer fireman and other characters. The formula works brilliantly, giving Baker the opportunity to flash back to Ruth's survival of the Irish potato famine; the voyage she and so many Irish made from their ravaged country to America; and her future husband's journey from slavery in Charleston, S.C., to freedom in New Jersey. The combination of momentous events, tellingly real aspects of lower-class 19th-century life, and raw emotions like fear and pride make this a viscerally affecting story. Baker intertwines love, violence, history, adventure and social commentary to give readers an invigorating, heartbreaking tale of the immigrant experience. Agent, Henry Dunow. (Oct. 15) Forecast: Like Dreamland, Baker's latest will undoubtedly attract much attention, based on his name and strong word of mouth. It will be especially popular in New York, although an eight-city author tour and national advertising should bring him numerous readers outside of the city. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
It may seem as if the Civil War has been done to death, in fiction as well as in nonfiction. But the author of the best-selling Dreamland (1999) wisely mines a relatively untapped Civil War vein: the devastating 1863 riots in New York City caused by President Lincoln's announcement of a draft. (In his acknowledgments, Baker calls the riots «probably the worst civic disturbance in the history of the United States.») Baker's success as a historical novelist rests on his superb ability to bring contemporary understanding to consequential events of the past by creating fictional yet totally credible characters whose lives are deeply affected by these events. In this case, the people impacted by the disastrous riots include Ruth Dove, who lives in poverty in Lower Manhattan with her husband, an escaped slave, and their children, and fears the return to New York City of her former lover, the vicious Johnny; Johnny's sister, Deirdre, whose husband is off to the war; and Maddy, a bordello keeper whose «sponsor» is newspaperman Herbert Willis Robinson. These are the major players in this richly detailed, impeccably researched drama. Occasionally, the power of individual moments within the story almost outshines our sense of the novel as a whole, but even so, most historical fiction fans will relish the book's grand sweep as they savor its well-crafted parts. Brad Hooper.
Kirkus Review
The New York City draft riots of 1863 provide an appropriately violent subject for this period melodrama from the historical researcher (for Harry Evans's The American Century) and novelist (Dreamland, 1999, etc.). The eponymous setting is a Dantesque slum where the "only sound heard in the street is the buzzing of flies, hovering over the heaps of garbage and the horse carcasses." That uncomfortably vivid description is offered by Herbert Willis Robinson, a New York Tribune reporter who drifts incognito throughout the Alley and environs, recording the destructive rage of an impoverished (mostly immigrant) populace reacting to the wholesale drafting of workingmen unable to pay their way out of military service. Though Robinson alone speaks as a first-person narrator, he's one of several major characters whose viewpoints relay the increasingly complex action. Foremost is Ruth Dove, a rag-picker who has survived Ireland's Potato Famine and the attentions of Dangerous Johnny Dolan, an embittered thief and murderer recently out of prison, and a ticking time bomb aimed in the direction of Ruth (with whom he fled Ireland, and who possesses a "treasure" Johnny wants back), her husband Billy, a runaway slave, and their five biracial children. The story of Ruth's ordeal during "The Year of Slaughter" (1846) and escape to America is neatly juxtaposed with the entwined present fates and past histories of several other vigorously drawn characters. Prominent among them: the aforementioned Johnny, a vicious destructive force of nature; his long-suffering sister Deirdre O'Kane and her husband Tom, a wounded Civil War veteran; stoical Billy Dove, who labors against insuperable odds to exemplify the simple goodness his name suggests; truculent prostitute Maddy Boyle (who's "kept"-though not controlled-by Robinson); wily Tammany Hall politico Finn McCool; and numerous other briefly glimpsed figures. Paradise Alley is probably too long, and the grisly, frequently nauseating naturalistic detail is laid on with a trowel. But it's deftly plotted, fabulously detailed, and never less than absorbing. An authoritative blend of documentary realism and driving narrative that's just about irresistible. Author tour
Library Journal Review
In his follow-up to Dreamland, Baker continues to bring New York City history to life. This time he focuses on the Draft Riots of 1863, when rampaging Irish immigrants literally burned the city. To tell the story of those three fateful days in July, Baker employs multiple narrators: Herbert Robinson, a reporter for the Tribune, and Maddy, his Irish mistress; Billie Dove, an escaped slave, and his wife, Ruth, an Irishwoman who survived the potato famine; and Johnny Dolan, a murderous Irish thug, his upwardly mobile sister Deirdre, and her husband, Tom O'Kane, now serving in the Union army. The characters not only describe the riot but also recall the events that brought them all to New York City's Paradise Alley. Baker, who served as chief researcher of The American Century, seamlessly weaves actual events and figures into his fictional narrative. However, while the novel skillfully illuminates a little-known episode in this country's history, few of the characters are particularly engaging or likable. For larger fiction collections. Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Paradise Alley Chapter One Ruth He is coming. Ruth leaned out the door as far as she dared, peering down Paradise Alley to the west and the south. Past the other narrow brick and wood houses along Cherry Street, slouching against each other for support. The grey mounds of ashes and bones, oyster shells and cabbage leaves and dead cats growing higher every day since the street cleaners had gone out. Fire bells were already ringing off in the Sixth Ward, somewhere near the Five Points. The air thick with dust and ash and dried horse droppings, the sulfurous emissions of the gasworks along the river, and the rendering plants and the hide-curing plants. It was not yet six in the morning but she could feel the thin linen of her dress sticking to the soft of her back. "The good Lord, in all His mercy, must be readyin' us for Hell--" She searched the horizon for any sign of relief. Their weather came from the west, the slate-grey, fecund clouds riding in over the Hudson. That was how she expected him to come, too, fierce and implacable as a summer storm. His rage breaking over them all. He is coming But there was no storm just yet. The sky was still a dull, jaundiced color, the blue tattered and wearing away at the edges. She ventured a step out into the street, looking hard, all the way downtown, past the church steeples and the block-shaped warehouses, the dense thicket of masts around lower Manhattan. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual shapeless forms lying motionless in the doorways. A ragged child with a stick, a few dogs. A fruit peddler with his bright yellow barrow. His wares, scavenged from the barges over on the West Side, already pungent and overripe. Nothing coming. But then, it wasn't likely he would come from the west anyway-- With a muted cry she swung around, then ducked back into her house, bolting the door behind her while she fought for breath. The idea that he could have been coming up behind her the whole time. She remembered how quickly he could move. She could feel his hands on her, could see the yellow dog's bile rising in his eyes. That merciless anger, concentrated solely upon her-- She had not truly believed it before now--not even after Deirdre had come over to tell her yesterday afternoon. Standing there on her doorstone, one foot still in the street as if she were hanging on to the shore. Wearing her modest black church dress, her beautiful face even sterner than usual. She was a regular communicant, Sundays and Fridays--no doubt especially agitated to have to see Ruth on the Lord's day. She told her the news in a low voice, all but whispering to her. Deirdre herself, whispering , as if somehow he might overhear. He is coming. He had come--all the way back from California. It was a fearsome, unimaginable distance. But then, what was that to a man who had gone as far as he had already? A friend of Tom's, a stevedore, had seen him on the docks--as stunned as if he had seen Mose himself stepping off a clipper ship, back from his bar in the Sandwich Islands. Coming down the gangplank with that peculiar, scuttling, crablike walk of his, fierce and single-minded as ever. Moving fast, much faster than you thought at first, so that Tom's friend had quickly lost him in the crowd waiting by the foot of the gangplank. Already disappeared off into the vastness of the City-- Which meant--what? The mercy of a few days? While he found himself a room in the sailors' houses along Water Street, began to work his way relentlessly through the bars and blind pigs, sniffing out any news. Sniffing out them . Or maybe not even that. Maybe he had hit it right off, had found, in the first public house he tried, a garrulous drunk who would tell him for the price of a camphor-soaked whiskey where he might find a certain mixed-race couple, living down in one of the nigger nests along Paradise Alley-- No . Ruth calmed herself by sheer force of will. Picking up a broom, she made her hands distract her. Sweeping her way scrupulously around the hearth, under the wobbly-legged table even though she knew there was no need, they would never live here again after this morning. When she made herself think about it logically, it wasn't likely he could be that lucky. He had never had much luck, after all--not even with herself--and his own face would work against him. He couldn't go out too bold. They would remember him still, after what had happened with Old Man Noe. Men would remember him, would remember that , and keep their distance. Maybe even turn him in, for the reward-- They still had time. A little, anyway. She and Billy had talked it out, deep into the night. Time enough for Billy to go up to his job at the Colored Orphans' Asylum in the Fifth Avenue today, and collect his back wages. Then they would have something to start on, at least, to see them through up to Boston, or Canada. Why aren't we in Canada already? We should be there-- She swept faster, in her anger and her frustration, kicking up the fine, black grit that crept inexorably through the windows and over the transom, covering the whole City over, every day. They had talked about leaving, all these years, but somehow they had never actually gone. She had put it down to Billy's moodiness and his obstinacy, the lethargy that seemed to hold him sometimes, particularly when he'd been drinking. Yet it was more than that, and she knew it. They both felt safer here--on their block, miserable as it was, in the bosom of their friends and neighbors. They told themselves there would be risks if they ran, perhaps even worse risks. A white woman and a black man, with their five mixed-race children . . . Paradise Alley . Copyright © by Kevin Baker. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
