Bill Hope - Clifford Browder

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Résumé :
New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a thief and other adventures. The second novel in the Metropolis series. Bill discusses his experiences as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his scorn for snitches and bullies; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; his brief career on the stage playing himself; his loyalty to a man who has befriended him but may be trying to kill him; and his sojourn among the loonies in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. In the course of his adventures he learns how slight the difference is between criminal and law-abiding, insane and sane, vice and virtue-a lesson that reinforces what he learned on the streets. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope.

Biographie:
Dark Knowledge, the third novel in Clifford Browder's Metropolis series, tells how New York City was the center of the North Atlantic slave trade right up until the outbreak of the Civil War. To write it, Browder did extensive research at the New York Public Library and the library of the New York Historical Society, using primary sources whenever possible. Readers will come to know the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront, the horrors of the slave ships and their crammed human cargo, the clever subterfuges with which those involved in the trade avoided exposure, and the violence of slave revolts. The Metropolis series includes two other historical novels, The Pleasuring of Men and Bill Hope: His Story. Browder has also published an award-winning selection of posts from his blog: No Place for Normal: New York. He has never owned a television or a car, barely tolerates the computer (the feeling is mutual). Lately he learned the Charleston; geezers rock.