Empire Rising [Audio CD]

Thomas Kelly (Author), Michael Deehy (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2005 | ISBN-10: 0792734467 | ISBN-13: 978-0792734468

It is 1930, and ground has just been broken for the Empire State Building. One of the thousands of men who will come to work high above the city is Michael Briody, an Irish immigrant torn between his desire to make a new life in America and his pledge to gather money and arms for the Irish republican cause. When he meets Grace Masterson, an alluring artist who is depicting the great skyscraper's rise from her houseboat on the East River, Briody's life suddenly turns exhilarating--and dangerous--for Grace is also a paramour of Johnny Farrell, Mayor Jimmy Walker's liaison with Tammany Hall and the underworld.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Construction was started on the Empire State Building on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1930. It was just as the Depression was beginning to squeeze America in its death grip and every job was sacred. Kelly, who created first-rate working-class heroes in Payback and The Rackets, takes a fascinating look at how New York City was run at the end of the Jazz Age—by bribe, kickback and political machination. The characters are tough and vengeful: Michael Briody, steelworker, WWI vet, IRA gunman; Johnny Farrell, a "narrowback" lawyer who functions as the mayor's bagman; Grace Masterson, a beautiful painter who lives on a houseboat on the East River, holds dark secrets and counts both Briody and Farrell as lovers; and Egan, the governor's dour henchman. Historical figures of the time round out the cast: FDR, the governor of New York, making sure that nothing will hinder him on the way to the White House; Mayor James J. (Jimmy) Walker, a dapper rogue and master practitioner of "honest graft"; Judge Joseph Force Crater, stooge of Tammany, destined to be eclipsed in a legendary way; and Al Smith, the "Happy Warrior," a political has-been now in charge of the construction of the world's tallest building. Kelly weaves a fascinating tale that captures the cadences and decadence of art deco New York, where desperate working-class have-nots and powerful elite swells collide violently in a nation on the brink of great change.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

"The Empire State Building will dominate the Manhattan skyline," all New Yorkers realize in 1930 as construction proceeds, but then, too, "nothing gets built in Gotham without a kickback." Thus is the basic premise of this, to borrow construction language, riveting novel evoking in authentic detail the underside of New York City politics during the era of Mayor Jimmy Walker. Kelly's story is basically the tale of a love triangle between Johnny Farrell, an important aide to the mayor; Johnny's artist girlfriend, Grace Masterson; and construction worker and part-time boxer Michael Briody. Each of these characters represents, without the flatness of type, a significant element of the fabric of New York City as the Empire State Building rises ethereally above the street-level realities of hard economic times and how big-city government works. Kelly successfully melds actual historical figures and fictional ones, but in the end, it is New York City itself that emerges as the central character here: a place that makes people the way they are. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Sound Library (February 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792734467
• ISBN-13: 978-0792734468
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,004,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Historical Novel And Thomas Kelly's Best, August 10, 2007

By 

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Empire Rising: A Novel (Paperback)

As a chronicler of the dark, gritty underworld of New York City's working-class labor, Thomas Kelly has definitely become its poet laureate in his novel "Empire Rising", among the finest novels I have read of Depression-Era New York City (It actually deserves 4.5 stars from me and I wish Amazon.com had the option of bestowing an additional half star.). This is a dramatic, vivid, and richly-textured, no-holds-bar examination of New York City in 1931, as seen through the eyes of recent Irish immigrant Michael Briody, who works by day building the Empire State Building, and then, by night as both a boxer and an unrepentant soldier of the Irish Republican Army. In New York City he soon meets another, more worldly, recent Irish immigrant, Grace Masterson, and falls in love with her, even though he knows that she is the "concubine" of powerful Tammany Hall leader Johnny Farrell. This is indeed far from a romantic look of the Empire State Building's construction, since Kelly depicts his characters being immersed in a dark, often bloody, underworld of Tammany Hall political intrigue, Irish-run organized crime, and Irish Republican Army strife. Without question, "Empire Rising" is not only Kelly's best work of fiction, but also among the finest I have seen from the latest generation of Irish-American writers residing here in New York City.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You Gotta Be Tough, January 18, 2006

By 

Notnadia (Currently upstairs.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Empire Rising: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is not the type of book I have a reputation for reading. It's a hard-core, bare-knuckles, get-to-the-top kind of fictional tale, set in Depression-era New York City, and it features among its fine cast of characters a number of real life personas, including future President Franklin Roosevelt, and New York's irrepressible "born for office" governor, Al Smith.

Empire Rising tells the story of New York City at all levels of society during this tough time, and uses the construction of the Empire State Building as a backdrop and metaphor. As Kelly pulls no punches in stating, it is the Irish, those first, second, and third generation rough-souled immigrants who make New York City function. Not only is it the Irish who run the city at both the street level and into the halls of power, but it is Irish working men who provide the backbone of the labor force that is building New York's most prized showpiece, the Empire State Building. (Think it's a coincidence that construction on the project began on Saint Patrick's Day?)

The character of Michael Briody, who has gone from a terrorist group's hitman to a soul in love with the dream that is the skyscraper he's struggling to see completed, is Kelly's best figure in this novel. He seems a very realistic individual, leagues removed from the stick-figure stereotypes so many other authors would have employed here in this sort of situation.

I enjoyed this novel, even if it was definitely at times a little cold and lacking in human kindness. I think it shines light onto what is both a forgotten and mysterious period in American history, and it also gives a reader an excellent plot that never slows or grows tiresome, and which reaches masterful heights in its climactic moments.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Has anybody here read Kelly........................, June 24, 2005

By 

Joe Flood - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Empire Rising: A Novel (Hardcover)

Holy Moly, this guy keeps getting better with every book. I'm a dyed in the wool Steinbeck, London,O'Hara reader, but I think Kelly is starting to slap those boys back a bit. My pantheon is reshuffling. As soon as my eyes hit the first page, I was sucked into this tremendous story. If you are a Real New Yorker, this is the baby to take a gander at.
Keep up the writing Mr. Kelly.
Jose` de Toluca