It's time to celebrate Autumn, and what better way to do it than with books about New York? Of course, with so many books about that place, one has to winnow it down somehow. I've decided to highlight some new titles about Old New York in the Gilded Age.
Graham Moore has written a legal thriller, The Last Days of Night, with a philosophical bent. Brilliant but wet behind the ears, lawyer Paul Cravath is asked by industrialist George Westinghouse to represent him in a lawsuit war against Thomas Edison over the electric lightbulb and the differing methods of delivering electricity to a power-hungry America. Cravath agrees, and the tension and maneuvering begins. Nikola Tesla is recruited to build a better lightbulb and is nearly killed for his efforts, Cravath falls for a diva with a secret, and even Alexander Graham Bell gets in on the action. And during all this, Cravath is left to wonder what really makes one the inventor of a thing. While Moore takes some liberties with the timeline of actual events (mostly collapsing them), this novel is largely based on true events in Gilded Age New York. While not quite as fast-paced as Caleb Carr's The Alienist, which is set in the same period, this is a solid historical, legal thriller.
In A Deadly Affection by Cuyler Overholt, Dr. Genevieve Summerford is newly certified as a psychiatrist in 1907, much to her father's dismay. If she must work, why can't she be a "real" doctor? Nevertheless, Dr. Summerford starts treating a group of women all suffering psychosomatic illnesses. When one of the women is accused of murdering a society doctor with a line in adoption on the side, Summerford puts on her detecting hat to figure out what's really going on. Similar in certain ways to the Maisie Dobbs series, these are complex, introspective characters in an intricate plot. Details both rich and gritty add to the strong sense of New York on the brink of immense change.
Sara Donati's The Gilded Hour concerns not one, but two female physicians. Cousins Sophie and Anna tend their impoverished patients in the 1880s, as the Brooklyn Bridge rises and Anthony Comstock comes down like Thor's hammer on anyone he sees as immoral. Anna gets involved with a young Italian immigrant trying to reunite her family and meets an educated Italian American detective. Sophie, who is multiracial, falls and is fallen for by a sickly heir to one of New York's leading families. Things get more complicated when Sophie treats a victim of a botched abortion, alerting the cousin doctors to a serial killer and attracting the attention of the ruthless Comstock. Part romance, part mystery, part old-fashioned melodrama, this intricately-plotted, lush novel is great to curl up with for a weekend.
Got favorites among the books of Gilded Age New York? Let us know in the comment section.
Add a comment to: Autumn in New York: 3 Recent Stories of the Gilded Age