Synopses & Reviews
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.
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“Extraordinary....Baker achieves a hallucinatory realism packed with sensory detail.” Los Angeles Times Book Review
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“Paradise Alley is a skillful historical reconstruction -- an exploration of love and loyalty.” Hartford Courant
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“A rare and special work.” Denver Post
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“[An] extraordinary talent....Kevin Baker is quickly altering the landscape of American historical fiction.” Christian Science Monitor
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“Skillfully illuminates a little-known episode in this countrys history.” Library Journal
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“[A] richly detailed, impeccably researched drama.” Booklist
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“An engrossing epic” Entertainment Weekly
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“Paradise Alley probes the primal mysteries of ...love and war with skill, drama and deep humanity.” Edmonton Journal
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“Rich in color and drama.... Extraordinary.... A triumph.” New York Times
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“A page-turning epic.” New York Post
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Phenomenal.” San Diego Union-Tribune
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“Inspired.... vividly entertaining, and its themes are as timely as any drawn from this mornings newspaper. ” Baltimore Sun
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“[A] huge success....fascinating, instructive, never pedantic.” Houston Chronicle
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“Deftly plotted, fabulously detailed, and never less than absorbing.” Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
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“Extraordinary....Baker achieves a hallucinatory realism packed with sensory detail, demonstrating why historical fiction is able to trump conventional historiography.” Los Angeles Times Book Review
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"Kevin Baker is quickly altering the landscape of American historical fiction. His first novel,
Dreamland, burst into flames three years ago a hypnotic portrayal of Coney Island designed to parallel the chaotic city of New York in 1911. His latest,
Paradise Alley, stays on Manhattan, but it moves back to the Civil War, rescuing from national amnesia the worst riot in US history.
Baker's descriptions of New York City could be more pungent only with scratch 'n' sniff inserts. While Dreamland rose into the lurid surrealism of the carnival, for this more grounded history, Baker has only to follow the ghastly imagination of the rioters, whose deeds he unearthed in contemporary newspaper accounts. Indeed, this mammoth book threatens Cormac McCarthy's position as the country's most violent novelist." Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire CSM review)
About the Author
The critically acclaimed novel Dreamland established Kevin Baker as "one of America's best new writers" (Boston Herald). Now, with Paradise Alley, he emerges as one of the most important voices of his generation. Currently at work on the third volume of his "City of Fire" trilogy, Mr. Baker is also the author of the novel Sometimes You See It Coming and served as chief historical researcher for the nonfiction bestseller The American Century. He is married and lives in New York City.