City of Dreams: Summary and book reviews of City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling, plus links to an excerpt from City of Dreams and a biography of Beverly Swerling.

Rich with unforgettable characters and history, intricately plotted and utterly absorbing, City of Dreams is a stirring saga of early Manhattan and the beginnings of medical science told by a master storyteller. In 1661, Lucas Turner and his sister, Sally, stagger off a small wooden ship after eleven weeks at sea to make a fresh start in the rough and rowdy Dutch settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam. Lucas, a barber surgeon, and Sally, an apothecary, are both gifted healers and bound to each other by blood and necessity. Yet as their new lives unfold, lust, betrayal, and murder will make them deadly enemies. In their struggle to survive in the New World, both make choices that will burden their descendants -- dedicated physicians and surgeons, pirates and whoremasters -- with a legacy of secrets and retribution. That heritage sets cousin against cousin, physician against surgeon, and ultimately, patriot against Tory. In a city where slaves are burned alive on Wall Street, where James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams walk The Broad Way arguing America's destiny, and where one of the greatest hospitals in the world is born in former shipwrights' workshops by the East River, the fortunes of the two families are inextricably entwined. Their pride and ambition, their loves and hates, and their willingness to live by their own rules will shape the future of medicine, and the becoming of the dream that is New York.

Media Reviews

Booklist The early history of Manhattan is chronicled through six generations of a remarkable clan of surgeons, physicians, and apothecaries.   Kirkus Reviews Ambitious historical novel of New York City's medical practices from the 1630s to the 1780s, a first novel freighted with so much fact and family melodrama it almost sinks under its own weight. ....But early medicine and city history undeniably make for an interesting read.   Publishers Weekly ... descriptions of early operations with crude instruments are detailed and riveting. The city of New York is a character in its own right, but even it cannot compete with the richly drawn, well-rounded people Swerling creates. This engrossing, generously imagined tale deserves the large audience it should find at a time when the founding fathers reign triumphant in biography.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Shirley
City of Dreams
Simply put I loved it! From the start I connected with the characters and that did not wane as the book progressed. At times I struggled with the brutality of humanity but the journey with the main characters kept me reading. I was relieved to...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Nat
Historically very interesting!
I really hate history, truly do, especially the development of Northern America bores me to death, however "city of Dreams" actually got me interested in how everything was a few centuries ago, especially how people's cognition and perception of...   Read More

Review (not rated) by Ralph Ekwall
There are good things about this book. I got into it because I am interested in genealogy and have a number of ancestors who lived in early New Amsterdam. It has a good historical context.

My main complaint is that as soon as I got used to...   Read More

Review (not rated) by frank m
One of the best reads of the year. If you like historical fiction this in a must read.

Review (not rated) by rcoop17
I was involved from the first chapter. This novel was a powerful mix of drama and documentary. While some of the well-drawn descriptions of medical procedure fascinated me, the narrative of the filth and the poverty made me want to stop reading,...   Read More

Review (not rated) by Judy Keeter
I read this book when it first came out and it was wonderful!! hated to see it end...

...1 More Reader Reviews

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Books with similar themes

• Historical Fiction
  
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• Mid-Atlantic 
  
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• Immigrants & Expatriates