“New York: The Novel”

[Madame]

I just stumbled across this review, sounds like something I'd like to read.

Novel tells New York City’s story

By Bob Salsberg, Associated Press

New York City wasn’t born a grand metropolis and world financial center. In 1664, the year in which Edward Rutherfurd begins “New York: The Novel” ($30), his latest sweeping historical novel, New York is New Amsterdam, a modest Dutch trading post of about 1,500 residents on an island the American Indians called Manna Hata.

It starts with Dirk van Dyck, a fur trader, returning to the settlement on the great North River, which some preferred to call Hudson’s River, in honor of the great explorer, Henry Hudson. Also in the canoe is Pale Feather, a half-Indian girl of about 10, conceived during one of van Dyck’s frequent trips up the river to trade with the Algonquins.

Van Dyck loves the girl but is regretting his decision to bring her on this visit to New Amsterdam. How could he possibly explain his illegitimate daughter to his wife, the attractive and self-assured Margaretha de Groot? He cannot, so he passes her off as a young Indian servant, nothing more.

In the tradition of James Michener, Rutherfurd unfurls more than three centuries of the city’s history as seen through the eyes of the descendants of van Dyck and Master — and the many other colorful characters he introduces along the way.

Fictional characters mingle with real ones and experience the city’s greatest triumphs and greatest tragedies, the 2001 World Trade Center attacks among the latter.

“New York: The Novel” is the first foray into America for the British author who, as in previous works, never hesitates to pause the narrative to explain to readers, in an easily understood way, the historical context of the time in which the action is unfolding. The result is a book as accessible to the casual reader as it is to the history buff.