City of Dreams: A Novel of Nieuw Amsterdam and Early Manhattan

Beverly Swerling's first novel is an incredibly ambitious look at the pre-revolutionary history of New York. Swerling focuses on one family, but because her novel spans 150 years of history within that family it touches on a tremendous wealth of subject matter, from early surgery to conflicts with Native Americans to the status of Jews in the early colonies to the status of slaves to the revolutionary war itself. Unlike some authors penning historical fiction--Phillipa Gregory, for example--Swerling is unafraid to address the stark ugliness of the time. Further, she doesn't feel it necessary to populate her book only with well-known historical figures. In fact, one of City of Dreams' greatest strength lies in the voice it gives to show more oppressed communities of the era. Looking beyond the sheer scope of the plot--this is a big book, incidentally, in terms of both length and density--Swerling does a masterful job of creating complex, yet sympathetic characters of every status, class, gender, and color. In fact, my biggest complaint with the book was that I had significant difficulty keeping the bloodlines straight from generation to generation; I would become so wrapped up in each story's specificities that I often forgot who was related (by blood or adoption) to who. This might sound like a nit-picky complaint, but I feel the volume would have greatly benefited from the inclusion of a family tree. Familial ties play an important enough role in City of Dreams that forgetting them might detract from your experience of it. show less

City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling is a multi-generational family saga that details the growth of New York City between the years of 1661 to 1798, spanning over 130 years. With such a huge background and time period to cover, the novel does seem a little choppy at times as we meet characters only to have them dropped in order to jump ahead 30 - 40 years. The book opens with main characters Lucas Turner and his sister Sally, who arrive in the New World when the city is still under Dutch control. Lucas is a barber & surgeon by trade, and each subsequent generation carries on the family’s medical traditions.

As this family grows together, fights, splinters and turns against each other in vicious revenge, we also see the emergence of New show more York City as a major concern in the American colonies. The author covers some little known details about New York such as the original importance of the slave trade, to the constant fear of slave revolts. Story lines cover a variety of subjects from political ties to the running of whorehouses, trading guns to the Indians and the beginning stirrings of revolutionary fever, through the Revolutionary War and the years immediately after it. Of course, the main focus is on medicine, and the author goes into great depth to show how difficult this science was to advance against the superstitions and fears of the day. While this wasn’t a story that totally absorbed me or that I even liked for much of the time, I am in awe of the detailed research that the author must have done.

As we read of the evolving science of medicine, we can also see the growth of a small town into the beginnings of the mighty city that New York was destined to become. City of Dreams is the first book of a trilogy about New York, but at this time I am not sure if I will continue on. show less

Family saga of a brother and sister and their descendants, from the arrival of the pair in New Amsterdam to succeeding generations in New York City through the American Revolution. In each of the generations there are surgeons, physicians and apothecaries: [healers through herbal medicine]. We follow their joys and sorrows. Too much sex bothered me but the city came to life in all its incarnations. The family tree in the front of the novel was a very big help and I referred to it often. The descriptions of 17th and 18th century medicine were ghastly. But some new techniques were tried: inoculation against smallpox, blood transfusion.

Recommended.

Excellent! I thoroughly enjoyed all the gory parts about surgery in the 1700's...and felt strongly for the characters. Much better than her first one..there was too much politics in that one. This one had a better mix of politics and authentic NY history.

An engaging novel set in early New York about the first generations of a family of gifted surgeons and healers. Interesting parallels with modern times with the ignorance and prejudice of the public against vacinations.

After seeing the book's title, the lovely watercolor on the cover, and the first chapters, I was initially enchanted with this book. But the writing and editing quality drop quite dramatically after that point, which also happens to be the beginning of some new, controversial content. My (amateur) hunch is that the book was "rushed" into publication owing to this content--and although I welcome the new information, I'll wait until it is presented in a "readable" format.

I thoroughly enjoyed this family saga, covering over 100 years of history of early Manhattan. The characters are descendants of a brother and sister who immigrated to the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam in 1661: Lucas Turner, a barber/surgeon and his sister Sally, an apothecary. All subsequent generations included members of these medical occupations. The saga continues thru the American Revolution.