New York

By Edward Rutherford

With my recent trip to New York, I felt it only appropriate to finish a book I began more than a year ago. I'd stopped reading around the turn of the 19th Century because I'd read the period of American history I was most interested in. However, with the trip to the Big Apple, I was re-motivated to get it finished at some point turning this year long project. Little did I realise it would become my penultimate book.
As I said, the early American history was what I found most interesting. The Dutch fort, local interactions the indigenous population, the fur trade. I enjoy the highs and lows of family sagas. Each generation improving, or not, upon the previous.

Although I didn't finish this book in time, I think it only fair to mention that it would have appeared in the Hastings District Library Adult Reading programme under the "Read a book based on a place you have always wanted to visit".

Synopsis

NEW YORK: A CITY WHERE DREAMS ARE BORN. 
And now, the story of the world's most vibrant and exciting city is chronicled in a novel as unforgettable as the city itself, as international best seller Edward Rutherford tells the epic tale of the Master family.
From the city's birth over three hundred years ago to the tragedy and heroism of 9/11. Rutherford's gripping saga takes us on a journey encompassing the War of Independence and the Civil War, the gangs of New York and the Ellis Island immigrants. From the glittering wealth of Fifth Avenue society to the devastation of the Wall Street Crash and the ghettos of the Lower East Side, the narrative is as ambitious and dramatic as the city which inspired it.
But NEW YORK is not just the story of a city. It's also the very human story of a family - their lives and loves, their triumphs and their failures - and so a spellbinding and moving novel of the modern world.

Author

Edward Rutherfurd was born in England, in the cathedral city of Salisbury. Educated locally, and at the universities of Cambridge, and Stanford, California, he worked in political research, bookselling, and publishing. After numerous attempts to write books and plays, he finally abandoned his career in the book trade in 1983 and returned to his childhood home to write SARUM, a historical novel with a ten-thousand-year story, set in the area around the ancient monument of Stonehenge, and Salisbury. Four years later, when the book was published, it became an instant international bestseller, remaining 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Read More...

Other Works

Sarum (1987)
Russka (1991)
London (1997)
The Forest (2000)
Dublin: Foundation (2004)
Ireland: Awakening (2006)
New York (2009)
Paris (2013)
China (2017)