SUNRISE ON MANNAHATTA

A historical novel follows the first Dutch family in New York City.

Adrienne Cuvillier begins keeping her diary at the age of 8. That year, most of the members of her family are killed when their house and wool carding workshop burns to the ground. Adrienne and her grandmother Mathilde are the only survivors, and they are forced to rely on the kindness of a cousin and his sons to take them in. Their native city of Valenciennes is caught up in the religious tensions that have swept the southern Netherlands since it came under the rule of Spain. Adrienne and her relatives are committed Reformists opposed to what they see as Roman Catholic encroachment. Young Adrienne soon takes a liking to her new, big family, especially her cousin Guillaume de la Vigne. When he gets older, Guillaume gets a job with the newly formed United Company of Merchants. In that capacity, he has the opportunity to join a voyage to the West Indies aboard the small ship Lookout, an otherworldly adventure that brings him into contact with the Native people on the far side of the ocean. He returns home with an itch to see more of the New World. Guillaume and Adrienne are married with two little girls when a new offer from the company comes through. He is to return to America, this time with his family, to settle at an undisclosed location and trade with the Natives. After their initial settlement proves inhospitable, Guillaume and his family end up on the more amenable island of Mannahatta. “In this paradise, when you hold me like this, I feel we are Adam and Eve in the garden,” Adrienne tells Guillaume as they sail down the Hudson. “Strange, though to see the Garden of Eden sliding past us like this.” Will their new home prove a true paradise, or will these hardy Dutch settlers find themselves quickly cast out?

Alley tackles an underdramatized period of American history: New Netherlands, from the early days of Manhattan to the obscure massacre at Swanendael in what is now Delaware. Her precise prose re-creates this lost world in convincing detail. Here, Guillaume records interactions from his initial voyage: “These natives say (as they point far to the west and southwest) lots of forest, lots of game and lots of pelts to trade. We traded one entire trunkful of our goods for half of our hold full of beaver and four handsome fox pelts as well as fifty thick, shiny, dark brown skins of a small animal I do not know.” The author has certainly done her research, but she appears to have been unwilling to leave any of it out of the 586-page tome. It’s clear that she cares about these characters, who are modeled on her own ancestors. But readers have no such affinity, and Alley never gives the players enough personality to win the audience over. The accompanying illustrations, uncredited rough sketches scanned from sheets of paper, add little to the work. Fans of early New York history will enjoy Adrienne and Guillaume’s tale, but readers of general historical fiction will likely feel a bit overloaded and underwhelmed.

A well-researched but overstuffed tale about New York’s early Dutch settlers.