New York

A sweeping historical saga that traces the birth and development of the city from the Dutch founding of New Amsterdam in 1626 to the events of the modern era, including the attacks on the World Trade Center.

The novel begins with Dirk van Dyck, a Dutch trader who settles in the area of what will one day become New York when the city is still called New Amsterdam, and conducts active trade with the Native Americans — the Algonquins and the Mohawks — who inhabited the Hudson Valley at the time. The van Dyck family becomes connected to the family of an English settler named Master, and it is the descendants of these two lineages who move through the entire narrative, serving as the thread that binds the whole novel together. At the same time, the author follows the fate of the family of an African slave named Quash, whose descendants also become part of New York’s cultural tapestry. Later, the story expands to include the German Keller family, the Italian Caruso family, the Jewish Adlers, and the Puerto Rican Campos family. Each of these families represents a successive wave of immigrants that shaped the city’s multicultural character, while their intertwined destinies reveal the family traditions of different communities and the intercultural relationships among the city’s residents.

Rutherford brings to life the most important events that shaped both New York and America as a whole: the War of Independence, the Zenger case, the Boston Tea Party, the Civil War, the excesses of the Gilded Age, the wave of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the trials of the Second World War, the city’s near-collapse in the 1970s, and its dramatic revival in the 1990s. The pages of the novel also feature brief appearances by outstanding historical figures — from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to the legendary baseball player Babe Ruth.