Electric City
A Novel
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Upstate New York, at the confluence of the great Hudson River and its mighty tributary the Mohawk —from this stunning landscape came the creation of a new world of science. In 1887, Thomas Edison moved his Edison Machine Works here and in 1892, it became the headquarters of a major manufacturing company, giving the town its nickname: Electric City.
The peak of Autumn, 1919: The pull of scientific discovery brings Charles Proteus Steimetz, a brilliant mathematician and recent arrival from Ellis Island, to town. His ability to capture lightning in a bottle earns him the title "Wizard of Electric City." Barely four feet tall with a deeply curving spine, Steinmetz's physical deformity belies his great intellect. Allied with his Mohawk friend Joseph Longboat and his adopted eleven–year–old granddaughter Midget, the advancements he makes in Electric City will, quite simply, change the world.
The peak of Autumn, 1965: Sophie Levine, the daughter of a company man, one of the many scientists working at The Company, whose electric logo can be seen from everywhere in town. Her family escaped Europe just before World War II, leaving behind a wake of annihilation and persecution. Ensconced in Electric City, Sophie is coming of age just as the town is gasping its last breaths. The town, and America as a whole, is on the cusp of great instability: blackouts, social unrest over Vietnam, and soon the advent of the seventies. Into her orbit drifts Henry Van Curler, the favored son of one of Electric City's founding Dutch families, as well as Martin Longboat, grandson of Joseph Longboat. This new generation of Electric City will face both the history of their town and their own uncertain future, struggling to bridge the gap between the old world and the new.
Electric City is a vital, pulsing, epic novel of America, of its great scientific ingenuity and its emotional ambition; one that frames the birth and evolution of its towns against the struggles of its indigenous tribes, the immigrant experience, a country divided, and the technological advancements that ushered in the modern world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her structurally flawed multigenerational tale, Rosner (Blue Nude) explores the history of "Electric City," the New York town along the Mohawk River where Thomas Edison chose to relocate Edison Machine Works (later General Electric), his research and manufacturing enterprise "that would light up the world." The bulk of the novel alternates between two eras of the company town. The first begins in 1919 and focuses on Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a physically deformed mathematician known as the "Wizard of Electric City." Steinmetz is conducting cutting-edge research on manmade lightning generators while developing a spiritually rewarding friendship with a Native American named Joseph Longboat. The narrative then switches to the latter half of the 1960s when the company embarks on series of layoffs that harbinger Electric City's decline. We meet Sophie Levine, a high school student whose Dutch-Jewish father works for the famous company begins a romance with Henry Van Curler, the privileged son of a storied Electric City family. Sophie is also intrigued by Martin Longboat, the rebellious grandson of Joseph Longboat who is interested in Steinmetz's life and works. The novel fails to achieve a balance between the earnest but stale teenage love story and the portrait of Steinmetz, which is informative but often dramatically inert. Throughout, the writing is flooded with countless electrical metaphors, which generate thematic unity if not a particularly galvanizing tale.
