Description
Book SynopsisThe Billy Gogan story is a fictional memoir told by an old Army general of his adventures as a young man. Billy Gogan, American, opens with recently orphaned Billy Gogan fleeing Ireland on the eve of the Great Hunger -- either because he is the son of a dangerous revolutionary, or because his cousin doesn't trust him around his daughter. Billy befriends a destitute Irish peasant named Maire and her young daughter Fiona, and together they endure a harsh passage to New York, America's greatest city. They get separated as they debark, and Billy searches tirelessly for them in the dangerous Five Points, ground zero in the collision of Americans, ex-slaves, and Irish refugees. Here, Billy completes his education. Already able to declaim Cicero and construe Aristotle, he learns voting fraud from Bill Tweed, the future head of Tammany Hall, and the numbers game from Charlie Backwell, Tammany's top bookie. Finally, Brannagh O'Marran, the beautiful mulatta daughter of the Irish madam of Gotham's finest brothel, teaches him about love. Billy eventually finds Maire and Fiona, and the three of them plan their future together. But that future is taken in a cruel stroke, and nothing will ever be the same.
Trade Review"Roger Higgins is a bare-knuckled storyteller. In this brawny novel, he transports us to the hardscrabble lives of mid-1800s New York Irish immigrants. Though each day brings a new brawl for survival, under Higgins's deft touch, the heartbeat of tenderness, love, and even racial enlightenment pulses through 'Gotham's' brutal veins. "Higgins writes with a masterful sense of place. His argot and descriptions are so spot-on, you need to close the book and look around your own room to remind yourself that you really are safe and sound in the here and now." --Gary Buslik, author of A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean, and Professor of English, University of Illinois, Chicago
Table of ContentsForeword PART I TA EIRE TAR EIS THREIG ME (IRELAND HAS FORSAKEN ME) Dublin and County Cork, Ireland September 1844 CHAPTER 1 Cricket CHAPTER 2 Be Gone ... and Damn Yer Hide CHAPTER 3 If No One Sees It PART II THE WESTERN OCEAN September 1844 -- January 1845 CHAPTER 4 Anchored CHAPTER 5 An t-Anfa Mor (The Great Tempest) CHAPTER 6 Sceal Mhaire (Mary's Story) CHAPTER 7 Slighe go Mheiricea--Aris (Passage to America--Again) PART III GOTHAM The Promised Land January -- August 1845 CHAPTER 8 I'm So Cold I Could Die CHAPTER 9 Right in Front of Me CHAPTER 10 Building the Grubstake CHAPTER 11 Dells, Swells and Fires CHAPTER 12 Free Mulattas and Texas Slaves CHAPTER 13 Brannagh's Story CHAPTER 14 Election Day CHAPTER 15 Citizen Gogan CHAPTER 16 Saving Her Flesh and Blood CHAPTER 17 Taking a Round Turn CHAPTER 18 The Waste of It All Glossary
