An Original Belle

New York, 1863: a girl who takes nothing on faith, three men in love with her, and the Draft Riots — five days in which the city tore itself apart and the mob hunted black New Yorkers through the streets. Roe was a Presbyterian minister and a chaplain at Gettysburg who turned novelist after the Chicago fire; he outsold every American novelist of his decade, and the riot chapters here are eyewitness history.