by Pete Hamill
On the “Great Negro Plot” of 1741, Thomas J. Davis’s A Rumor of Revolt: The “Great Negro Plot” in Colonial New York is indispensable, as is the contemporary report by Daniel Horsmanden called Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy Formed by Some White People in Conjunction with Negro and Other Slaves Burning the City of New-York in America and Murdering the Inhabitants. I read the abridged version, edited in 1851 by William B. Wedgwood. Michael G. Kammen’s Colonial New York: A History is a fine work of reconstruction of the years before the American Revolution and helped me with the wider context of 1741.
Many other books fill my New York shelves, from Herbert Asbury’s classic The Gangs of New York to Sean Wilentz’s Chants Democratic. Most recently, I’ve learned from Gerard T. Koeppel’s Water for Gotham, M. H. Dunlop’s Gilded City, and Richard B. Stott’s Workers in the Metropolis. I have hundreds of volumes too on Irish history, too many to list, but some of which provided details of the arctic winter of 1740 and the famine that was forgotten after the much larger horrors of the Great Famine of the 1840s, which changed Ireland and New York for a century.
History is not everything, of course. The poetry and journalism of Walt Whitman are essential for any writer about New York, as are the works of Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser, and, of course, Henry James. But much is to be learned from the pulp fiction produced for more than a century in New York, from the dime novels of the dreadful Ned Buntline and his more respectable contemporaries to the works of the Black Mask school of detective fiction. I admire too the works of Caleb Carr, Jack Finney, and above all, the splendid New York fictions of E. L. Doctorow, who has turned so much of our narrative into high art.
My writer friends Julie Baumgold and Carolina Gonzalez helped with details I could not know. But this novel the process of imagining and writing was almost constantly a process of reimagining and rewriting, of finding fresh connections and unexpected patterns, and making decisions about what could be eliminated and what must be kept. That process was driven by the high standards and respect for craft of my editor, Bill Phillips. His contribution to this work was absolutely essential. He goaded me, pushed me, cajoled me, encouraged me, made me laugh, and gave me the time to do what had to be done, regardless of deadlines. It was a marvelous experience; our e-mails alone would make a small book, and I’ll be grateful to Bill Phillips, well, forever.
I was accompanied on this journey by my wife, to whom this book properly belongs. But I was also in the company of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Erik Satie, Scott Joplin, Benny More, Miles Davis, J. S. Bach, the unknown masters of Gregorian chant, and Duke Ellington, and by a marvelous creature named Gabo, who was what John Cheever once called “a former dog.” Gabo didn’t live to see me finish, but he’s in these pages too.
Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
Dedication
ONE: Ireland
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
TWO: The Arctic Heart
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
THREE: The Ocean Sea
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
FOUR: The New York Morning
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
FIVE: Revolutions
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
SIX: The Time of the Countess
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
SEVEN: Boss
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
EIGHT: Now
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
NINE: Ever After
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
By way of thanks
About the Author
ALSO BY PETE HAMILL
Copyright
About the Author
Pete Hamill has been editor in chief of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News, for which he currently writes a regular column. In his writing for these publications as well as the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Newsday, he has brought the city to life for millions of readers. He is the author of previous bestselling books, including, most recently, the memoir A Drinking Life and the novel Snow in August. He lives in New York City.
ALSO BY PETE HAMILL
Novels
A Killing for Christ
The Gift
Dirty Laundry
Flesh and Blood
The Deadly Piece
The Guns of Heaven
Loving Women
Snow in August
Short Story Collections
The Invisible City
Tokyo Sketches
Journalism
Irrational Ravings
Piecework
News Is a Verb
Tools as Art
Memoir
A Drinking Life
Biography
Diego Rivera
Why Sinatra Matters
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by Deidre Enterprises
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
First eBook Edition: May 2011
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-316-19625-3
