I read it because the publisher left copy on every doorstep along Strivers Row. With due respect to the author, who seems like a good guy, this is simply dismal.

This is third in a series of books known as the City of Fire, where Kevin Baker delves into the drama of everyday lives among the ordinary, working class communities of historical New York. The books are always richly detailed and well-told. This time the story is set in Harlem in 1943 against the backdrop of World War II and racial tensions ratcheting up. This story is framed around two main characters: the Reverend Jonah Dove who feels unworthy of his leadership role compared with his legendary father and is sometimes able to pass as white, and a fictional version of Malcolm Little who would become Malcolm X. Choosing Malcolm X for a character in a novel is a daring move, especially since Baker takes liberties with the timeline of his discovery of the Nation of Islam. But overall both his characters are rich, flawed, fully-human, and have a feeling of authenticity. The novel is peppered with historical events and the characters reactions to them. Like the previous two novels - Paradise Alley which ended with the Draft Riots and Dreamland which ended with the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - Strivers Row culminates in a major event in New York City, this time the Harlem Race Riots of 1943. I think Baker did a better job overall with the previous two books, but this is an entertaining and though-provoking novel ( )

It feels like I've been reading this book forever!! I thought it was two weeks, but then I remembered I started another book or two and abandoned them as not worth my time before starting this one. So, maybe it wasn't so bad.

Anyway, it was a really fat book. 500+ pages. But it was pretty good. It's fiction, but it's peopled with fascinating historical characters. The main character is Malcolm Little; you probably know him better as Malcolm X. Baker does a great job bringing Harlem in the 1940s to life. There are jazz clubs, zoot suits, conked hair, and torch singers. And racism. I was particularly captivated by the descriptions of the powerful black preachers in the novel. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. has a couple of cameo appearances, but Jonah Dove, a fictionalized version of Powell, was a main character. Through the book, you could see how they cultivated power--political, social, and spiritual.

Though I liked the details in the book, I wasn't as impressed with the overall plot. It was telegraphed pretty blatantly from the beginning of the book and required too many implausible connections and "chance" meetings between three of the characters. Still, it wasn't bad.

This is an ARC, so they may end up editing it down a bit. It could be tighter by 100 pages or so without losing too much of its power. I may have to check it out when it's released just to see if they cut it some.

I guess I'd recommend this one, but not as enthusiastically as some of the other books I've read this year. ( )