Metropolis - Softcover

Gaffney, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0434013315 ISBN 13: 9780434013319

Publisher: William Heinemann, 2005

Synopsis

Arriving in New York in 1868, our hero, travelling under the name of Georg Geiermeier, becomes a stableboy, tending a circus menagerie, until he is framed for an arson attack and finds himself once again is on the run. He falls into the hands of the Whyos, a gang who communicate with each other by means of a complex system of songs and calls, and is reborn first as an Irish labourer and then as a sewerman, unaware of the part in crime the Whyos have in mind for him. Falling in love with Beatrice, the young Irishwoman the Whyos have selected to teach him to pass as Irish, all seems well, until the gang's leader chooses Beatrice as his 'First Girl' and the plans of the Whyos begin to become clear...Set in a richly realised nineteenth-century New York, a world of crime, corruption, prostitution and disease, Elisabeth Gaffney's debut is a hugely entertaining, irresistibly readable story of love and crime.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Elizabeth Gaffney's magnificent, Dickensian "Metropolis captures the splendor and violence of America's greatest city in the years after the Civil War, as young immigrants climb out of urban chaos and into the American dream.
On a freezing night in the middle of winter, Gaffney's nameless hero is suddenly awakened by a fire in P. T. Barnum's stable, where he works and sleeps, and soon finds himself at the center of a citywide arson investigation.
Determined to clear his name and realize the dreams that inspired his hazardous voyage across the Atlantic, he will change his identity many times, find himself mixed up with one of the city's toughest and most enterprising gangs, and fall in love with a smart, headstrong, and beautiful young woman. Buffeted by the forces of fate, hate, luck, and passion, our hero struggles to build a life-just to stay alive-in a country that at first held so much promise for him.
Epic in sweep, "Metropolis follows our hero from his arrival in New York harbor through his experiences in Barnum's circus, the criminal underground, and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and on to a life in Brooklyn that is at once unique and poignantly emblematic of the American experience. In a novel that is wonderfully written, rich in suspense, vivid historical detail, breathtakingly paced, Elizabeth Gaffney captures the wonder and magic of a rambunctious city in a time of change. "Metropolis marks a superb fiction debut.

"From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author:

Elizabeth Gaffney is the editor of the Paris Review. She lives in New York. Metropolis is her first novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Heinemann
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0434013315
• ISBN 13: 9780434013319
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1