6/30/2023 0 Comments Dreamland by Kevin Baker“One of the interesting dilemmas of historical fiction,” Baker says during a call to his home in New York, “is how much room a writer has to make things up. No, the exhilarating loops and turns of plot that make Kevin Baker’s historical novel so entertaining are inventions of the author’s own imagination. Esther organized the women of the needle trades and fell in love with “Kid Twist” at Dreamland, the fantastical Coney Island amusement park that burned to the ground in 1911. Nor did he have a sister named Esther who worked at the infamous sweatshop, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. So far as we know, however, “Gyp the Blood” was not whacked on the head with a shovel by “Kid Twist” just as he was about to break “Trick the Dwarf”‘s back in a dingy dive in lower Manhattan (thus setting the well-oiled wheels of our story in motion). “He was eventually electrocuted for his role in the murder of ‘Beansie’ Rosenthal.” “‘Gyp the Blood’ was a real person who actually used to break men’s backs on a two-dollar bet!” says historian Kevin Baker about the most malevolent character in his novel, Dreamland.
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