description: A man is haunted by the memory of his mother standing under a gibbet with a rope round her neck. It is the American War of Independence, and having defied the British forces occupying New York she must pay for her revolutionary activities. But fifty years on her son harbours a festering guilt for his inadvertent part in her downfall. Then, in a nineteenth-century New York of thrusting commercial enterprise, a ruthless merchant's sensitive son is denied the love of his life through his father's prejudice against the immigrants then flooding into the city - and madness and violence ensue. Finally, a Manhattan psychiatrist tries to treat a favoured patient reeling from the destruction of the World Trade Centre. But she fails to detect the damage she herself has sustained, and suffers the consequences of her blindness.
language: English
title: Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now
titlecomplete: Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now
characters: Jay Minkoff, Danny SIlver, Hester Van Horn, Noah Van Horn, Jerome Brook Franklin, Julius Van Horn, Sarah Van Horn, Kim Lee, Paul Minkoff, Charlotte Van Horn, Annie Kelly, Max Rinder
genres: Literature, New York, Fiction, Short Stories, The United States Of America
ratings_count: 356
series: Writer and the City
publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC