“Extraordinary…Rich in color and drama…Successful… ambitious…[Baker is] a skilled ringmaster…a simultaneously a richly imaginative fiction writer steeped in historical fact and a meticulous historian…a master of momentum… Without ever slowing his novel’s pace or letting us lose sight of any of his characters, the author takes the reader on a careering, kaledioscopic tour of their world.…Baker’s itinerary encompasses ravaged Ireland and the carnage at Fredericksburg, as well as New York’s lower depths…We visit places most New Yorkers know nothing about…As convincing a portrayal of how things were in our city that terrible summer and as a compelling fictional vision of how things might have been, as well, ‘Paradise Alley’ is twice a triumph.”

—Geoffrey Ward