The drowning room
By: Michael Pye.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: Granta Books in association with Viking
Published: 1995
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 252
Subjects: Reyniers, Gretje -- Fiction.; Women -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction.; Dutch Americans -- Fiction.; New York (N.Y.) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction.
Description: Gretje Reyniers is one of the unacknowledged mothers of New York - whore, moneylender and pelt dealer when the city was still a tiny, hardscrabble colony of the Dutch. She left a formidable impression in the records of colonial New Amsterdam, but these are hardly more than a catalog of petty crimes. So in this vivid and haunting novel, Michael Pye sets out to imagine her whole, back to her wild, indomitable self.

Part history, part love story, part memoir, filled with startling imagery, this is an unforgettable account of a woman who was once lost in dusty records - and now is restored to her extraordinary life.