Hooligans Alley

Fueled with in-depth research and personal recollections, Hooligan’s Alley presents a historic novel embracing generations of early European immigrants and their amazing struggles.

In the style of a novel, author Joanna Kelly tells the true story of Wilhelmina Huebner Metting, an orphaned farm girl who uprooted her life in Germany to search for an aunt living far away in America. Her quest took her to New York’s infamous Hell’s Kitchen, an area of overcrowded slums, lumberyards, slaughterhouses, factories, and immigrants troubled by poverty and violence. There, seventeen-year-old Wilhelmina started a seamstress business and kept cows on a vacant city lot.

Wilhelmina was, above all things, a passionate social reformer. She encountered American society first during the Civil War, a time of great social unrest. Her involvement with the Colored Orphan Asylum put her in the center of the New
York City Draft Riots, the largest uprising in the history of the United States.

Wilhelmina’s story inspired Kelly, who fleshed out the few hard facts she could find with a lovingly researched fictional visit to a long-lost time and place in America’s history.

“Joanna Kelly…draws special strength from her Quaker faith as well as her insatiable thirst for history in writing her first novel, Hooligan’s Alley. She is a gifted writer who explores her love of music, wildflowers, and passion for family in weaving this remarkable series of adventures that will set your heart to racing, while stretching your own recollections and imagination. Hooligan’s Alley is a must-read for New Yorkers and history lovers, and everyone who cares about origins and family.”

—E. Barrie Kavasch best-selling author of The Medicine Wheel Garden