It is 1934, and New York City is in the icy grip of the Great Depression. With enormous compassion, Dr. James Delaney tends to his hurt, sick, and poor neighbors. His patients include gangsters and Tammany chieftains, veterans and day laborers, prostitutes and housewives. If they can’t pay, he treats them anyway. He is a good man in a bad time.
But in his own life, Delaney inhabits the country of numbness. He is haunted by the slaughters of the Great War. His only daughter has left for Mexico to pursue revolutionary dreams. And his wife Molly vanished many months before, leaving him to wonder if she is alive or dead. Now living alone in the far west of Greenwich Village, hard by the Hudson, which New Yorkers still call the North River, Delaney submerges his own pain in the pain of his patients.
But in his own life, Delaney inhabits the country of numbness. He is haunted by the slaughters of the Great War. His only daughter has left for Mexico to pursue revolutionary dreams. And his wife Molly vanished many months before, leaving him to wonder if she is alive or dead. Now living alone in the far west of Greenwich Village, hard by the Hudson, which New Yorkers still call the North River, Delaney submerges his own pain in the pain of his patients.
Then, on a snowy New Year’s Day, the doctor returns home to find his three-year-old grandson on his doorstep, left by his mother in Delaney’s care. Coping with this unexpected arrival, Delaney hires Rose, a tough, decent Sicilian woman with a secret in her past. Slowly, as the ice in the North River begins to break up, Rose and the boy begin to care for the good doctor, and the numbness in Delaney begins to melt.
Recreating 1930s New York with the vibrancy and rich detail that are his trademarks, Pete Hamill weaves a story of honor, family, and one man’s simple courage that no reader will soon forget.
Courtesy of Little, Brown and Co.