About book City Of Dreams: A Novel Of Nieuw Amsterdam And Early Manhattan (2002)
I'm so glad this was good because it's very long and has very tiny type. Sometimes when it takes me this long to read a book, I feel like I'm stuck in it and all I can think about is what I want to read next. I almost didn't want this one to end. It was all so interesting and well-written. I loved the overlap with the different generations of the two branches of the Turner family. I loved the details about early New York (and Nieuw Amsterdam) and what it was like to live there then. I found the medical element fascinating. Early medical procedures were so barbaric! It's really a wonder to me that any humans at all survived. Of course, probably in 100 years doctors will think our medical procedures are barbaric. (We actually cut people open!!!) It was so interesting to me that physicians, and in fact, most of society, looked down on surgeons. It seems that the only thing the "trained" physicians did was cupping, bleeding or leeches. Did any of those things help anyone, ever? No one in this book, that's for sure. At least the surgeons tried new ideas and treatments, usually to the horror of society. I liked how the medical element carried through the generations. Most of the men in this book were jerks, even if they had good intentions. Luckily most of the women in this book were awesome. They were smart, strong and capable. Jennet was my favorite. Two warnings about this book. First, the family tree in the front of a book is a bit of a spoiler. Don't look at it if you don't want to know who lives, who dies, who marries whom and who has babies. I confess, I looked at it -- a lot. Second, life back then was sad, terrible and brutal, which means a lot of this book is sad, terrible and brutal. Again, I am amazed that anyone survived! I kept thinking of the movie, "A Thousand Ways to Die in the West". Apparently there were a million ways to die in New York, each more terrible than the last! I still really enjoyed this book and am happy to see it's the first of a trilogy. Appropriately enough, I read the part of this book that takes place in 1776 over Independence Day weekend. It gave me a greater understanding of what we were celebrating and all the sacrifices it took to get there.
I want to give this an extra half star but Good Reads doesn't allow that. I am a huge fan of historical fiction, particularly NYC. This book delivered and I am about to start the next in the 4 novels of this series. The writing is solid, the characters developed well and have a staying power. A few images were quite vivid and frightening but I checked and some of the barbarism mentioned actually occurred. This author did all her research and made earliest Nieuw Amsterdam and New York not only come to life but filled with excitement, danger and promise. Her vivid descriptions were so real that I often thought I smelled whiffs of the smells she described.I have read several books fiction and non about the 1600s to the Revolution in NYC and I know a lot about the era. Swerling brought some new information to light and also a new slant by introducing doctors, barbers, surgeons, physicians and other healers as protaganists. My cousin Carol introduced me to this author and I have a feeling that Swerling's talents as a writer will have me reaching beyond this series, too.
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The author explores slavery, medical science, the early American bordello, and politics of the Ameican Revolution in this engaging novel set in New York City, originally the Dutch city of Nieuw Amsterdam. Among interesting historical trivia, Beverly Swerling gives us the origin of the term "grog," first used in the 1740s. This is the term applied by British sailors to their watered-down rum rations administerd by Admiral Edward Vernon, a naval officer always identified by his heavy grogram silk coat. The pride, ambitions, and fortunes of two families are traced in this city of dreams.
—Linda Harkins
While I liked this multi-generational historical novel, I often found myself struggling through it. I have lived in New York state most of my adult life, but was not educated here, and thought this would be an entertaining way to learn some state history. I guess the novel fulfilled that goal, but I don't find myself anxious to run out and snap up the next book in Beverly Swerling's series. Not that I would never do so, but this was not a page-turner, nor was it light reading. The historical aspects were very interesting and apparently well-researched, but the plot often got lost in the rambling detail and the fast-forward time lapses. I especially enjoyed the medical history as the roles of surgeon(barber), MD, and apothecary came to overlap and merge. I was disappointied in the author's development of character: she introduced some potentially interesting characters, but never seemed to get to the heart of their personalities, especially at the start of the book. Nearer the end, the characters had more to them, but it was too little and too late to get me hooked.
—Donna
The story starts with two characters, Lucas and his sister Sally, in the very beginnings of New Amsterdam(later to be named New York, after the British King "gifts" the city to his brother, the Duke of York, despite it being a Dutch possession). Lucas is a surgeon, and Sally an apothecary. The book follows the two characters family lines for several generations, watching the city develop around them, and following the development of medicine in the city/times as well. I really enjoyed the book, loved a lot of the characters and watching both the city, and medicine, develop was fascinating. My only complaint (which is a common one when a book tries to follow such a long timeline, much like the characters in Edward Rutherford books) is that you get attached to characters, and yet their storylines can be shorter than you like because it's time to move on to the next generation in the story.
—Kristin
