Banished Children of Eve, A Novel of Civil War New York [Mass Market Paperback]

Peter Quinn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1995

Banished Children of Eve, a novel of America struggling to become a melting pot, marks the debut of a gifted storyteller. It is New York City, the time of the Civil War. The war has just entered its third bloody year, and the North is about to impose its first military draft, a decision that will spark the most devastating and destructive riot in American history. Quinn gives us these events through the eyes of people drawn from every part of the city's life - minstrels, street gangs, servants, soldiers, and clergymen, Yankee, African American, and Irish. It is the New York of Jimmy Dunne, a streetwise Irish-American hustler in search of the big score. Of Eliza, an African-American actress seeking her place in a city where her family has lived since colonial times. Of Jack Mulcahey, Eliza's lover, who escaped death in the Irish famine of the 1840s, and is struggling to hold on to his position as one of New York's leading minstrels. At the heart of Banished Children of Eve is the American search for the Promised Land. Along with Jimmy, Eliza, and Jack, it is a search shared by Charles Bedford, a scheming and ambitious stockbroker, and by Margaret O'Driscoll, an immigrant servant girl in Bedford's home. There are two other shadowy presences. One is a drunken and broken drifter, Stephen Foster, who has given away all his songs, but who can still remember the music, which becomes the music of the novel. The other is the Civil War itself. Through the stories of these disparate lives, all brought together in the cataclysm of the Draft Riots, Quinn spins out the fates of his rich and vital characters as he brings magically to life a pivotal period in this country's history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Quinn's remarkably accomplished debut is a historical saga set in New York in the summer of 1863.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Set in New York City during the Civil War years, this first novel echoes with Stephen Foster songs and the disparate voices of its teeming throngs of citizens while focusing on the experience of Irish Catholic immigrants. Quinn offers a strong, imaginative, and well-researched examination of the life of common people in that time through portraits of hucksters, minstrel actors, speculators, soldiers, and domestic servants whose lives touch. Their stories, set against a background of emigration, war, gangs, racism, stock exchange crashes, shanty towns, draft resistance, prostitution, strikes, and the manipulation of the uneducated masses to embrace a national interest, suggest that characterization of any past as "the good old days" is always a matter of who's doing the talking. Thoroughly enjoyable, educational, and highly recommended for fiction collections.
- Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (February 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140230033
• ISBN-13: 978-0140230031
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,426,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

.
Peter Quinn joined Time Inc. as the chief speechwriter in 1985 and retired as corporate editorial director for Time Warner at the end of 2007. He received a B.A. from Manhattan College in 1969, an M.A. in history from Fordham University in 1974 and completed all the requirements for a doctorate except the dissertation. He was awarded a Ph.D., honoris causa, by Manhattan College in 2002.

In 1979, Quinn was appointed to the staff of Governor Hugh Carey as chief speechwriter. He continued in that role under Governor Mario Cuomo, helping craft the Governor's 1984 Democratic Convention speech and his address on religion and politics at Notre Dame University.

His 1994 novel "Banished Children of Eve" (Viking/Penguin) won a 1995 American Book Award. His second novel, "Hour of the Cat" (Overlook), set in Berlin and New York on the eve of WWII, was published in June 2005. "Looking for Jimmy: In Search of Irish America" (Overlook), a collection of non-fiction pieces, was published in February 2007. All three books are in print. His third novel, The Man Who Never Returned," which is based on the still-unsolved 1930 disappearance of NYS Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater, was published in 2010.

Quinn co-wrote the script for the 1987 television documentary "McSorley's New York," which was awarded a New York-area Emmy for "Outstanding Historical Programming." He has participated as a guest commentator in several PBS documentaries, including "The Irish in America;" "New York: A Documentary Film;" "The Life and Times of Stephen Foster," as well as the Academy Award-nominated film, "The Passion of Sister Rose." He was an advisor on Martin Scorcese's film "Gangs of New York." He helped conceive and script the six-part documentary "The Road to the White House," which aired on TG4, in Ireland, in 2009.

Along with his book writing, Quinn was the editor of The Recorder: The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society from 1986 to 1993. He has published articles and reviews in The New York Times, Commonweal, America, American Heritage, The Catholic Historical Review, The Philadelphia Enquirer, The L.A. Times, Eiré-Ireland, and in numerous other newspapers and journals.

At present, Quinn is on the advisory boards of the American Irish Historical Society, NYU's Glucksman Ireland House, the Tenement Museum and the New York City Landmark Conservancy. He is president and co-founder of Irish American Writers & Artists.

Married to Kathleen Burbank Quinn, he and his wife are the parents of Genevieve Barry Quinn and Daniel Ryan Quinn. They reside in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

His website can be found at www.newyorkpaddy.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A difficult tragedy of forgetting in New York's palimpsest, August 6, 2002

By 

Kenneth Wolman (Sea Bright, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Banished Children of Eve, A Novel of Civil War New York (Mass Market Paperback)

I grew up in New York and walked many of the same streets Peter Quinn writes about in Banished Children of Eve. They're still there. If you look down at the pavement in some of the older neighborhoods, the same slate and stone sidewalks might still be in place that were there in 1863. Even if the remnants of that old city were plowed under by the wrecking ball, even before the terrorist came with his commandeered passenger jets, other remnants remained. And Gettysburg is not the only place where one feels the presence of ghosts.

Quinn's novel is imperfect. It's overly long and one could almost say the writing is florid, the style at points too meandering. But we are modernists or postmodernists, we are in a damned hurry and we want our plots laid out before us rapid-fire. Quinn slows us down. He draws us into the nexus of an old city beneath the city we know, a place of ugliness that makes even the ugliness of today's New York seem bucolic: today's racism and poverty are as nothing compared to what we find in Civil War New York.

Here people are still able to reinvent themselves and shapeshift. The daughter of a former stockbroker ruined in the 1857 Panic reinvents herself as the Trumpeter Swan, ultra-whore of a concert saloon and chief attraction of a peepshow for masturbating Union officers. A financier comes from nowhere, builds his fortune on a lie born of pre-computer identity-theft, brutally kills (of course in New Jersey!) to preserve his money, disappears, resurfaces as someone else and proves you can get away with murder. A safecracker becomes a hero in spite of himself and becomes the grandfather of a Jesuit Rector of Fordham University. A half-black woman masquerades as a Cuban actress.

Through it all runs the sense of tragedy, of a city burying its own past. Midian Wells disappears from Staten Island to Troy, graveyards are overturned for new building sites, the grave of a department store magnate is robbed for his grave desecrations, and ultimately the characters with whom we identify by novel's end are forgotten two generations later, plowed under by the present as Potter's Field is covered over by layers of new dead. What survives? Ironically, the monument of a decrepit Archbishop--St. Patrick's Cathedral--and the songs of a hopeless alcoholic, Stephen Foster, whose periodic appearances in the novel are perhaps its most gratuitous as well as ghastly element, a sense of living death hauled into view when real death, the slaughter of innocent and guilty alike, looms through the Draft Riots of July 1863, hanging over the novel like the diseases that swept through New York with the irregularity of sawteeth, and just as viciously.

The book is a hard read for people who want it easy. It's not linear, it's not always fun, and it's calculated at moments to make you turn your head away. I dread the idea that someone might wish to make a movie of Banished Children of Eve and "straighten it out." Its disconnectedness is its flaw and virtue together: you need to work at it, and the rewards outweigh the demands.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A NOVEL OF THE NEW SOCIAL HISTORY, May 26, 2002

By 

Cecelia E Connally (Cleveland, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Banished Children of Eve, A Novel of Civil War New York (Mass Market Paperback)

For generations historians studied the lives of elite white men in order to compile a record of the past. Starting in the 1950's, historians began using the "bottoms up" approach to history wherein they looked at the lives of individual persons at the lower end of the tradional social order. Traditionally historians considered the center of the society - kings, leaders, rulers - as the controlling force. More recent historians argue that the periphery, that is the persons of what was usually called the fringes of the society, controls the center.

Peter Quinn ably uses this approach in his novel BANISHED CHILDREN OF EVE. In considering life in mid 19th century New York City, he explains the prejudice that existed between the Irish and the Black community on an economic level which makes it understandable. While not justifying the acts of violence, the reader comes to see the blight of the underclass. The reader comes to identify with the overworked housemaid, petty criminal, homeless orphan and free black. One sees the corruption in the society. The upper clas is not romanticized but shown as the oppressors.

The Civil War affected major changes in the lives of most Americans. Quinn shows the changes in the lives of the major characters in the book. Through the eyes of these characters the reader sees the emergence of the middle class, which was one of the major impacts of the War. There are Horatio Alger stories in the book but not in the tradtional sense. The reader also sees the brutality of life in 19th Century society. Death and separation from parents and realtives were a common experience. The use of alcohol was common and one can see why the Temperance Movement became so important by the end of the century. And prostitution is shown as the only way out for many women. But some women do get out of it.

Students read about the brutality of slavery and as a African American and a student of African American history I am in no way trying to diminish the horrors of America's "peculiar institution." Slaves lacked all rights and had no freecom to lave their masters. Family members were sold and never seen again. But when you look at the lives of the working poor in New York during much of the 19th Century, there are many parallels. The horros of the middle passage are unspeakable but the horrors of many immigrant ships were terrible also.

Historian Nell Painter argues a theory of "Soul Murder." She aruges that the effects of slavery were so damaging to all of American Society, both black and white, that we are still feeling it today. She argues that the dysfunctional families of today are the result of the violence experiences of both black and while children during the 19th century. Her argument is interesting, but in it she fails to consider the effects on white society of such events as orphan children shipped West, the abandoned family as a result of immigration, alcoholism and death. Surely these events have long range consequences in contemporary society. Quinn includes all of these in his marvelous book.

By way of criticism I thought the book was a tad long. The story of the priest did not seem to add anything to the story and in my humble opinion could have been left out. Some of the sub plots got a little wordy. The point was made and the author could have moved on. I assume that Stephen Foster is used as an example of someone that falls from the upper class to the lower class whereas Bedford is a person that moves up. I'm not sure that Quinn does such a good job of wrapping up the story. In a sense the novel is kind of a look at a period of time in the lives of the characters. The reader is left to speculate as to the rest of their lives.

I first heard about this book when Quinn was interviewed on Public Radio. I bought it and started it and then left it on the shelf for a year or so until I saw in a recommended section in my local book store. That caused me to start it again. Once you get about 50 pages into the book it really kicks in and is a fascinating read. I high recommend BANISHED CHILDREN OF EVE to the student of American History and those interested in the study of Irish immigration.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bahished Children of Eve, December 1, 2001

By 

Bill Flanagan (New Paltz, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Banished Children of Eve, A Novel of Civil War New York (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a lovely lyrical book which accurately captures life in New York at that time. Quinn writes the way Irish tenors sing with rolling musical cadences that tumble and flow to heart breaking crescendos. The famine, migration and life in New York have never been written of with such compassion and artistry. It opened my eyes in a completely new way. Obviously, I loved this book.