New York - A Novel

New York's gift to the storyteller is magnificent: Indian and Dutch beginnings; larger-than-life historical characters like Lord Cornbury, the transvestite British Governor, the socialite Mrs. Astor, and the titanic J.P. Morgan; huge events from the Revolutionary War and the Civil War--when New York threatened to secede from the Union--to the Crash of '29 and the tragedy of 9/11. But it's the ordinary people I discover in my research--African slaves, Irish laborers, society ladies and sweatshop workers--whose lives move me most, and who provide so many of my plots and characters.