8. Women were forbidden from practicing certain skills, like surgery. Were you surprised by anything the women were allowed to do? What do the women in the book use as leverage for power? How effective are they? Does the behavior of the story’s women in any way foreshadow the eventual gains made by women in modern societies? If so, how?
9. Of all the factors that severely limited people in earlier history—gender, race, religion—which seemed to be the most restricting in this story? Think of at least one instance in which gender, race, or religion caused a character to do something they might not have done otherwise.
10. What grievances did the people of early New York have with the British? Several characters spent time in Europe being schooled, such as Andrew’s experience at Edinburgh. How were those characters perceived by other colonists?
A C
ONVERSATION WITH
B
EVERLY
S
WERLING
Q: Where did the idea for
City of Dreams
come from and how did the project evolve?
A: I had always wanted to do a book about the beginnings of Manhattan. It’s an incredible metropolis and compared to most of the world’s great cities, its history is much more accessible. Ten years ago my husband and I had an apartment in SoHo. Nearby was a small patch of ground some local people had turned into a “timescape. “It was planted with species indigenous to the island, and landscaped to resemble lower Manhattan before Europeans arrived in the early seventeenth century. It was fabulous. You could almost envision the native population around every tree. I began thinking about a novel set in the early city but I couldn’t find a peg on which to hang such a story so nothing came of it.
Some years later we moved to an old brownstone in Murray Hill, not far from Bellevue Hospital. I was having dinner with my literary agent one evening and he said he’d love to have a book about the development of a hospital like that. It struck me that a history of Bellevue might parallel a history of the city… The two ideas came together and this book was born.
Q: What sort of research did you do for
City of Dreams
?
A: For the historical novelist, New York on New York is as good as it gets. I spent countless hours in the city’s numerous specialist libraries. The book I wrote was not the one I first thought I was writing—it isn’t about the growth of Bellevue, only about its earliest beginnings—but I didn’t know that until later, so I began with research at the NYU Medical Center library, which has the Bellevue hospital archives dating back to the early days in Nieuw Amsterdam. Then the NYU librarian told me about the New York Academy of Medicine, which turned out to be a wonderful resource. The Academy’s rare book collection is rich in breathtaking seventeenth- and eighteenth-century medical and surgical texts. All, needless to say in the public domain. I hand-copied numerous descriptions of old surgical techniques (putting the books in a photocopy machine would put too much strain on their ancient spines) and they became the excerpts from Lucas Turner’s journals interspersed throughout
City of Dreams.
That’s why they so accurately reflect the medicine of the time.
Q: What happened when you discussed some of those medical techniques with modern doctors?
A: They were astounded. In one case, I described the stone cutting technique Lucas Turner used on Peter Stuyvesant, which was taken word for word from an old surgical textbook, and the doctor told me it was basically a technique that could still be used today—albeit with anesthesia and sterile instruments. I also had a fascinating talk with my own gynecologist. I was checking to see how long it would take to die from a botched abortion, how long it would take a woman to bleed out. No time at all she said and she mentioned that when she was a medical student she’d heard about a particular type of seaweed that was once used to dilate women preparing for abortions. That’s what led me to create the Women of Connemara, the ancient healing society, that is so important in the second half of the book.
Q: What surprised you most as you conducted your research?
A: I was totally astonished by the degree to which the New York economy depended on slavery. Unlike Boston, Providence or Philadelphia, which were, founded on high-minded theological principles, New York was always about making rich men richer. The Dutch originated the idea, but it was the English who perfected the process, and one way they did it was through slavery. New York was the only city in the colonies governed directly from London, and it became the linchpin of the British slave trade. I had certainly known before that slavery was not confined to the south, and that much of New England’s shipbuilding wealth came from building vessels to transport slaves, but that’s different from finding out that slavery and trading in slaves permeated every aspect of New York life. Or that the first slave uprising in the colonies took place in New York in 1712. Or that Wall Street served as the home of the biggest official slave market in the north. All of it was fascinating and all of it became part of my
City of Dreams.
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Acknowledgments
T
HIS BOOK WOULD
not have been written without the loving support of my wonderful husband. You would not be reading it but for the exemplary skill of my agents, Henry Morrison and Danny Baror—I am even more grateful for their friendship. The excellent editing of Sydny Miner made the book considerably more than it would have been without her.
Beyond those bedrock fundamentals, my greatest debt is to the authors of countless books lodged in the city’s many and mighty political and social and medical collections. The New York Public Library can, I think, have no equal. I’m particularly indebted to its Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a truly remarkable resource. The library of the New-York Historical Society and the vast library systems of the city’s colleges and universities were equally invaluable. For the historical novelist, New York on New York is as good as it gets.
The research was made immeasurably easier by endlessly helpful and patient archivists and librarians. Two deserve special mention: Adrienne Millon, archivist of the Ehrman Medical Library at NYU Medical Center, who made available the records of Bellevue Hospital back to its arguable and misty origins in Nieuw Amsterdam; and Caroline Duroselle-Melish, reference librarian of the Historical Collection of the New York Academy of Medicine, who unlocked for me a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century world of wonder preserved in pages so fragile one hesitates to breathe while examining them.
An army of other people offered their wisdom and their guidance. My special thanks to Hope Cooke, urban historian extraordinaire. And to Ted Burrows and Mike Wallace, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the city,
Gotham,
was published when I was halfway through the writing of
City of Dreams. Gotham
became my polestar, the navigational aid that could always be relied on, and the authors were unfailingly generous in their writerly willingness to share speculation.
While many women, I’m sure, have reason to thank their gynecologists, mine is possibly unique. Dr. Judith Morris de Celis mentioned seaweed, and sent me down a path that led to a wholly unexpected twist of the tale.
And whom does one thank for the Internet? This book and my life have been enriched by the people I met there, all so ready to make their expertise and their information available at the click of a mouse. I wish in particular to thank Lee Salzman, whose award-winning histories of the First Nations, including the first Manhattanites, shaped my thinking and framed my story. They are available to all at
dickshovel.com
.
Lastly, any errors of fact that crept in despite the best efforts of so many are entirely my fault and certainly not theirs.
Beverly Swerling
The High Hills Island
2001