Exile on Bridge Street
A Novel
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Three Rooms Press
Published:18th Oct '16
Currently unavailable, our supplier has not provided us a restock date
Exile on Bridge Street details teenage Irish immigrant Liam Garrity's struggle to adulthood in pre-Prohibition Brooklyn. Back home, Ireland's fight for its own independence erupts with the 1916 Easter Rising. The fate of Garrity's father, an Irish rebel, is unknown, which leaves his mother and two sisters vulnerable on the family farm as British troops swarm, seeking reprisals. Garrity must organize their departure to New York immediately. In Brooklyn, Garrity is adopted by Dinny Meehan, leader of a longshoremen gang based in an "Irishtown" saloon under the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. Meehan vows to help Garrity and his family. But just as Ireland struggles for independence, Garrity faces great obstacles in his own coming of age on the violent Brooklyn waterfront. World War I, the Spanish Influenza, the temperance movement, the rise of Italian organized crime, police, unions and shipping and dock companies all target the Brooklyn Irish gang and threaten Garrity's chances at bringing his family to New York. When "Wild Bill" Lovett, one of the gang's dockbosses vies to take over, both Meehan and Garrity face a fight for survival in New York City's brawling streets mirroring Ireland's own fledgling independence movement. Compelling writing by a master of historical fiction, as evidenced in the authors critically-acclaimed prequel Light of the Diddicoy.
"When accomplished Irish American writers address the lives and experiences of the early 20th century Irish in New York they are recording, but also in a deeper sense reclaiming, a lost heritage. This is painstaking work that's worth celebrating in its own right, but then to give us a vivid portrait of these flinty people in all their complexity and courage is a thing to cheer about. EXILE ON BRIDGE STREET ... is a high wire act of creativity and reclamation that deserves the widest possible audience." --Irish Central "The quintessential read for 21st century Brooklyn." --Irish Central "Loingsigh has an urgent story to tell. And he tells it well ... Loingsigh's great strength is his unsentimental take on the immigrant experience which--despite the rancor of today's debate--often acquires a sepia tone when it is discussed in the past tense. EXILE ON BRIDGE STREET should be required reading for those who rail about how today's immigrants 'refuse to assimilate.'" --Brooklyn Rail "History often fails to record the lives and struggles of ordinary men and women. But Eamon Loingsigh reminds us that a skilled novelist can bring to life people and places forgotten by history." --Terry Golway, author, Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics "A century following the first and until now last great novel of the Brooklyn waterfront, Ernest Poole's The Harbor, Eamon Loingsigh offers this gripping tale, soaked in the Irish immigrant dockworker experience and laden with real life legends from a vanished world." --James T. Fisher, author, On the Irish Waterfront "In Exile on Bridge Street, Eamon Loingsigh recreates the forgotten world of Irish immigrant New York with a combination of accuracy and drama found only in the best historical fiction." --Tyler Anbinder, professor of history, George Washington University; author, Five Points
ISBN: 9781941110423
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 368g
356 pages