Kevin Baker – författare

This is Dreamland, a uniquely fierce and magical tale that delivers both a sweeping chronicle of America at the turn of the century and an intimate, heart-wrenching portrait of the lives of its denizens. Among the thousands of immigrants who arrive in New York harbor is an Eastern European stowaway called Kid Twist, who soon earns his keep as an enforcer for the ruthless gangster Gyp the Blood. Soon though, Kid brutally splits with Gyp, leaving him bleeding from a shovel wound to the head in a rancid basement on the Lower East Side. His life now in jeopardy, Kid flees to Brooklyn, finding asylum with a Coney Island carny known as Trick the Dwarf.

While hiding out, Kid meets young Esther Abramowitz, a shirtwaist seamstress who labors under inhumane conditions. As their love affair blossoms, Esther emerges from quiet shop worker to foot soldier in the burgeoning labor movement. Changed by love, Kid, too, is no longer the ruthless scavenger he once was, as he prepares for an electrifying showdown with the vengeful Gyp the Blood.

Kevin Baker''s deftly imagined blend of meticulous historical research and assured narrative invention recreates a world bursting at the seams, a world of freak shows, cataclysmic exhibitions, mad dwarves, and bathing beauties. In prose that is at once ferocious and breathtakingly lyrical, Dreamland weaves a richly layered tapestry that captures perfectly the emotional and psychological essence of the American experience at the dawn of a new age.

At the height of the Civil War, word spreads through the poorest quarters of New York City that a military draft is about to be implemented -- a draft from which any rich man''s son can buy an exemption. The outrage this inspires escalates into the worst urban conflagration in American history.

Down in the waterfront slum of Paradise Alley, three women -- Deirdre Dolan O''Kane, Ruth Dove, and Maddy Boyle -- struggle with their private fears as they wait for the storm to descend upon them. Deirdre, devastated by the news that her husband, Tom, has been wounded in Gettysburg, must turn for comfort and aid to two women she has always judged as morally depraved -- Ruth, married to an ex-slave, and Maddy, a hard-living prostitute.

Summer 1943. Harlem is a never-ending carnival in the second year of the war. Yet underneath the glitter, its black residents remain second-class citizens, and the neighborhood is a tinderbox, waiting for a match.

Along these restless streets, two very different young men will cross paths. Their chance encounter will change both of their lives, and presage the battle for civil rights that is to come. Malcolm Little is a naive, cocky, troubled teenager and not yet the iconic civil rights leader Malcolm X. The Rev. Jonah Dove is the minister of one of Harlem''s greatest churches, and lives in the blocks known as Strivers Row. Their lives intersect when Malcolm rescues Jonah and his wife from a group of drunken white soldiers. For Jonah, it is a crowning indignity that brings on a crisis of faith. But Malcolm, haunted by his own past, temporarily forgets the incident and plunges ecstatically into the nightlife of Harlem -- yet he finds it hollow at the core. Lonely and confused, he starts to have odd dreams and visions -- the beginning of a religious conversion that will overthrow his whole world.

As race riots break out across the homefront, and Harlem slides toward the brink, Jonah and Malcolm must confront their own demons. Their next meeting, in the midst of turmoil, will lead them both to make fateful choices, for themselves and for their people.

Completing his ""City of Fire"" trilogy, master storyteller Kevin Baker has once again woven an epic tale set against the panoramic backdrop of a vanished New York. Bold and exciting, evocative and unique, Strivers Row sets a new standard for modern historical fiction.

Based in part on the life of baseball legend Ty Cobb, this book belongs in the pantheon of great baseball novels.

John Barr is the kind of player who isn''t supposed to exist anymore. An all-around superstar, he plays the game with a single-minded ferocity that makes his New York Mets team all but invincible. Yet Barr himself is a mystery with no past, no friends, no women, and no interests outside hitting a baseball as hard and as far as he can. Not even Ellie Jay, the jaded sportswriter who can out-think, out-drink, and out-write any man in the press box. She wants to think she admires Barr''s skill on a ballfield, but suspects she might be in love with a man who isn''t really there.

Barr leads the Mets to one championship after another. Then chaos arrives in the person of new manager Charli Stanzi, well-known psychopath. Under Stanzi''s tutelage, the team simply falls apart. Then Barr himself inexplicably starts to unravel. For the first time in his life, his formidable skills fail him, and only Ellie Jay and another can help - if he will let them. Hanging in the balance are his sanity, the World Series, and true love.

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.

A “masterful and moving” saga of 1909 New York City, where locals new and old seek to find their dreams—and themselves (Booklist).

“Terrific fun. . . . Historical fiction at its most entertaining.” —New York Times Book Review

A New York Times Notable Book

In a stunning work of imagination and memory, author Kevin Baker brings to mesmerizing life a vibrant, colorful, thrilling, and dangerous New York City in the earliest years of the twentieth century. A novel breathtaking in its scope and ambition, it is the epic saga of newcomers drawn to the promise of America—gangsters and laborers, hucksters and politicians, radicals, reformers, murderers, and sideshow oddities—whose stories of love, revenge, and tragedy interweave and shine in the artificial electric dazzle of a wondrous place called Dreamland.

“A Dickensian epic . . . meticulously researched and filled with passages of intoxicating, dreamlike frenzy.” —Entertainment Weekly

“An epic re-creation of an era. . . . A boisterous, rollicking carnival.” —People

“One is tempted to call this grandly entertaining saga some kind of populist masterpiece, as Baker gauges the myth of the egalitarian American melting-pot against the corruption, economic exploitation and racism of a cutthroat society.” —Publishers Weekly

The Rev. Jonah Dove is the son of a legendary Harlem minister, and a man troubled in both mind and spirit. He feels himself unworthy and incapable of taking up the burden of running his church from the larger–than–life figure who is his father. He is haunted both by his own, shameful history of "passing" as a white man in college, and by the prospects for his people in the harsh, new, racist age he fears the world is entering. Malcolm Little –– better known as Malcom X –– is a teenage hustler from Lansing, Michigan by way of Boston, a young man on the make, trying always to be something bigger, tougher, savvier, and more confident than he really is.

On his way to New York, Malcolm happens to come to the rescue of Jonah and his wife, Amanda, when they are attacked by some drunken soldiers on the train. From then on, their paths cross repeatedly as they each go about trying to find what they really want out of the roiling, wartime city, until the moment when Harlem finally erupts around them, as a people driven beyond endurance strikes out blindly at all the forces keeping it entrapped in misery and hopelessness. Stranded on the streets of a rioting city, Jonah and Malcolm meet each other once more, as they come to grips with what they are and what the future will hold for them.

Summer Theme:A Covenant in Christ JesusRuth | 1 Samuel | Matthew | Luke | Ephesians

Hundreds of thousands of students and teachers use Adult Bible Studies each week in Sunday school classes, mid-week Bible studies, and other small group settings. Bible-based and Christ-focused, it is an approved resource by the General Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church. It is published quarterly.

Free Extras! All found at www.adultbiblestudies.com

Current Events SupplementThe free Current Events Supplement offers a way to connect each week''s lesson to a timely event or topic in the news. The supplements can enhance all resources using the Uniform Series.

Register for the Forums at www.adultbiblestudies.com Bold, and you can post and read comments about the lessons from other readers.