Paradise Alley

A Civil War-era novel “intertwines love, violence, history, adventure and social commentary . . . an invigorating, heartbreaking tale of immigrant experience” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Paradise Alley is the story of three Irish immigrant women who are trapped together in the midst of the Draft Riots—perhaps the bloodiest, most destructive riots in American history. Ruth, married to a black man, tries to shield herself and her children from an abusive former lover. Deirdre, the embodiment of “lace-curtain-Irish” respectability, is desperate for news of her husband Tom, who lies wounded on the battlefield of Gettysburg. And Maddy, a hard-living prostitute, rejects the patronage of the cynical journalist who took her off the streets, recklessly endangering herself and those around her.

Paradise Alley is a searing, historical epic, sweeping from the starving villages of Ireland to riotous streets of New York City and the battlefields of Virginia. It is a story of the intersection of the Irish–and African-American experiences in the crucible of nineteenth-century New York—a story of race and hatred, of love and sacrifice, of fire and war, of risk and dauntless courage.