In an era dense with innovation and the complexities of human nature and ambition, these simple men are overwhelmed with the urgency to overcome their desperate circumstances. They yield to the swift justice of mob mentality. Yet their story is sprinkled throughout with the occasional brilliance of innocence in a hopeless world. Mired in the great conflict of mankind's struggle to survive in a fractured and unfair society, one riddled with injustice and depravity, these men daily watch the rich stride over the grasping hands of the destitute, deaf to their cries for help, oblivious to their need. This is a world where wealth and power drive the gears of poverty and the Yellow Brick Road is paved over with the dreams of immigrants and cast-offs.
In these short days of incidental violence, the words of one survivor, a prostitute named Maddy, are indicative of the random forces at work: "Men were always disappointed with something. That was the first thing to know about them. They were rarely satisfied, and when they weren't, they liked to blame it on something else- a rich man or woman. God in His infinite mercy... in truth it was all the same, the thing that stopped them. Best not to be mistaken for it." In unsparing prose, Baker tackles all the details, from the devastating famine in Ireland to the senseless torture of innocent blacks by fellow citizens. He portrays three couples to follow through this turmoil, an Irish couple, a mixed race couple and an unmarried couple, each with their own issues. To their lives he adds an unspeakable villain, who has survived life from one inhumanity to the next. It is a scathing story of depravity, frequently painful with detail and memorable for its potent message.
In the summer of 1863, poor, mostly Irish, workers in New York resent the mounting Civil War casualties, and hate the recently instituted draft. When the government tries to impose the draft, riots erupt that affect the lives of a vivid cast of characters.
Baker writes in a literary but not pretentious style. This is Kantor-type historical fiction: following many characters and giving details of each person's past. Some readers will probably find this hard to get through; for me, it was effective, giving each character depth and ratcheting up the tension as I had to wait to find out what was happening to each person in the "now" plotline.
The portrayals of 1863 New York and Famine Ireland are definitely gritty, not to say grotesque, but one gets the feeling that vast and accurate research has been done. Baker's overall grip of battles and soldier mentality seems strong--Fredericksburg is excellent and the mob scenes are powerful--but the most interesting part is really the fire-fighting scene, with the details of the engines and the crews. He writes well about members of several ethnic minorities, presenting them as individuals and giving a vivid cultural picture without resorting to condescension or political correctness. The character of Billy Dove, escaped slave and shipwright, is especially well portrayed.
Another reviewer mentioned that there isn't much to relieve the violence. Yet this fits such evocations. We look elsewhere than this novel or Scorsese for slapstick. As Baker's column and novel both emphasize, this NYC is amazingly dangerous. How could one walk one block and survive even before the riots? His constant and clever parallels (as drawn by his characters) between the famine, slavery, Civil War and street death, and the riots intertwine well these intricate threads into an engrossing read. thankfully, Baker manages to avoid cliche and sentimentality (except where the latter fits their telling of the story, given the characters' own worldviews and expectations).
The recollections of the characters offer great set-pieces: Tom's soldiering, Ruth's famine, Robinson's imagined reporting, and notably Billy Dove's adventures on the sea, his holding off the riot at the orphanage, and the powerfully rendered fate of Colonel O'Brien. I think there could have been more substantially differing "registers" to make the characters' indirectly told narratives more differentiated. Without giving anything away, considering the resolution, I think more liberty could have been taken to dramatize how the story was conveyed through these different figures. Hundreds of pages of musings filtered largely through an omniscient narrator makes for--as in many epic historical novels--lots of detail but a rather plodding form to transmit such rich sources of raw lived experience. Still, Baker's strength lies in particular scenes more than their sum total. As others note, the research weaved into the plot makes history personal and understandable--commendably done and fiction's trump over "plain" scholarship for most of us casually curious about this period.
I also wish an endpapers map had been included for those of us not so familiar with their island terrain. Baker describes it vividly, but it's hard to tell just how far, say, Billy Dove's sewer escape or Dangerous Johnny Dolan's mobleading horde took to criscross flaming Manhattan. My only other suggestion: edit down the final hundred or so pages. Perhaps form meets content here, but as the riot ebbs even as the climax nears, the rising energy of the narrative seems to weary instead of surge.
Too bad Archbishop "Dagger John" Hughes, creator of St. Patrick's cathedral, here is so doddering; for another take on his role in a similarly-staged (Penguin pbk.,1994) novel exploring black and Irish in the same riots, compare Peter Quinn's excellent "Banished Children of Eve." I see no credit from Baker to Quinn, but Quinn blurbs on the back jacket for Baker! Taken together with the film, you'll have three, well, violent but sensitive views of famine survival, slavery's victims, prejudice, and the ongoing Civil War as seen from the distance of the already congested, teeming city.
Hard to believe this was NYC (and America) only 140 years ago - pigs roaming the street freely, most people without any real employment or hope for the future, and a government that consisted mostly of corrupt, local thugs. The author seems to have done very thorough research and gives an excellent feel for what life was like at the time. You can even learn a little bit about how Central Park came to be, and the early days of the NYC water supply. There is even a glossary of terms at the end. The only criticism I can make is that there should have been a simple map of what NYC looked like at the time.This is great historical fiction and I truly enjoyed it.