by Mark Helprin
First published 2012
Harry Copeland comes home from the war in 1946. He served with the 82nd Airborne from North Africa to the Elbe River. Now he runs his family's leather goods business in New York, but his life feels empty. Everything changes when he meets Catherine Thomas Hale. She is an actress, singer, and heiress engaged to an older man who has exploited her since childhood. Harry and Catherine fall deeply in love, but their romance unfolds against the backdrop of a changing city. New York's aristocratic society collides with second-generation Jewish Americans. Organized crime continues its operations even as war veterans fill the streets. Harry wants only peace and family after the brutality he witnessed, but criminal extortion threatens his world. Catherine faces her own dangerous struggle that demands tremendous courage. Their love story plays out across the theater world, high finance, and industry as New York transforms at mid-century.
Genres: romance, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Elbe River, New York
Period: 1946
705 pages · Hardcover · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Content warnings: war