Paradise Alley is a story of the intersection of the Irish- and African-American experiences in the crucible of nineteenth-century New York – of race and hatred, of love and war, of risk and dauntless courage.
At the height of the Civil War, what begins with strong words will escalate into the worst urban conflagration in American history. Thousands of poor Irish immigrants smoulder with resentment against a war that has cost them so many of their young men. When word spreads throughout New York's immigrant wards that a military draft is about to be implemented – a draft from which any rich man's son with $300 can buy an exemption – trouble begins to spill into the streets.
Down in the waterfront slum of Paradise Alley, three women – Deirdre Dolan O'Kane, Ruth Dove and Maddy Boyle – struggle with their private fears as they wait for the storm to descend. Deirdre, whose lace-curtain sensibilities have always kept her at arm's length from her neighbours, is devastated by the discovery that her husband, Tom, has been wounded at Gettysburg. In her desperation, Deirdre must turn to Ruth, a woman she has always judged as morally depraved.
Ruth, too, has been cut off from her husband, Billy, an ex-slave. At dawn he set out for the Colored Orphans' Asylum uptown, to collect his last wages. But he has not returned by day's end, or by the next morning. In the meantime, Ruth has learned that dozens of black men and women have been lynched or beaten by rioters.
She begins to fear the worst, not just for Billy, but for herself and their children, too – because she now knows that 'he' is coming. 'He' is Johnny Dolan, Deirdre's estranged brother, who after fourteen years' exile has returned to New York. Years before, it was Johnny who saved Ruth from the famine in Ireland, who arranged for her steerage passage from Dublin to New York – and who beat her mercilessly until she arranged to have him sent away for murder.
Even as the riot builds, Dolan searches relentlessly for Ruth and Deirdre, carried along by the unruly mob. In the end, these remarkable women have nothing but one another to rely on as they seek to protect their homes and families from the brutality of a city gone mad.
- ISBN13 9780060561000
- Publish Date 3 December 2002 (first published 1 January 1975)
- Publish Status Permanently Withdrawn
- Out of Print 21 April 2022
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint PerfectBound
- Format eBook
- Pages 704
- Language English
- URL http://harpercollins.co.uk