North River

Starred review from April 23, 2007
T
he North River is what real New Yorkers call the Hudson. Two blocks from its shore, Dr. James Finbar Delaney lives on Horatio Street in Greenwich Village. He is a GP, servicing the indigent poor. A wounded veteran of World War I, he is despondent that his wife, Molly, has deserted him and that his only child, Grace, has left her son, two-year-old Carlito, in his care. In the dead of winter in the Depression year of 1934, Dr. Delaney knows “the cause of death was always life.” Delaney is numb from the war and the abandonment of his family. When he saves the life of gangster friend Eddie Corso, Italian hood Frankie Botts is not happy. Delaney can feel the threat to him and his grandson in his bones. To further complicate matters, the FBI shows up looking for Grace. If there’s any consolation for Delaney in the chaos that has become his life, it’s Carlito and Rose, his Sicilian illegal alien housekeeper, who has become little Carlito’s surrogate mother—and Delaney’s lover. Soon the North River comes to symbolize Delaney’s tormented life, as enemies and loved ones float in it, and Grace, on a liner, returns to New York to further complicate Delaney’s new, delicate household. Hamill (Forever
; A Drinking Life
) has crafted a beautiful novel, rich in New York City detail and ambience, that showcases the power of human goodness and how love, in its many forms, can prevail in an unfair world. 5-city author tour.

Starred review from June 1, 2007
Novelist and journalist Hamill's affection for New York Citymanifested recently in his best-selling novel Forever and the nonfiction Downtown: My Manhattancomes across in another treasure. This time, Hamill gives us the Big Apple during the Great Depression, when Fiorello La Guardia is mayor and Franklin Roosevelt is president. Diminished by an injury sustained in World War I and heartsick over his wife's disappearance and his grown daughter Grace's desertion to Mexico, humbly heroic Dr. James Delaney dedicates himself to the medical care of his fellow citizens, who run the gamut from the jobless poor to working prostitutes, from the Irish and Italians to the Chinese, and from war veterans to gangsters. Grace reappears suddenly and drops her three-year-old son, Carlito, on Delaney's doorstep before running off to Europe in search of her fugitive husband. Her thoughtless act saves Delaney, as Carlito, so precocious and innocent, and Rosa, a strong Italian woman hired to care for him, stir the doctor's heart to life again. With full, well-crafted characterizations of the city, its people, and the era, Hamill's novel is a touching, even poetic, gem. Highly recommended for all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/07.]Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC

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