SOURCE: "Struggling to Survive in a World of Hate," in Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1994, p. E2.

[In the following review, Bass commends Quinn for his "pungent style, refusal to romanticize and affinity for historical details."]

When most of us try to conjure up images of Civil War-era New York, we think of ornate drawing rooms populated by ladies in voluminous gowns and urbane, frock-coated men puffing on cigars. Banished Children of Eve, Peter Quinn's exceptional debut novel, presents the far more earthy New York of yesteryear. According to him, it was a grotesquely primitive and savage place or, as the book itself puts it, "a vast nether world of poverty, resentment and ethnic hatred."

Spanning 10 days in the spring and summer of 1863, this historical tale, a bit reminiscent of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, loosely interweaves the destinies of many fictitious and actual people.

We meet Jimmy Dunne, a...