NO. 10 DOYERS STREET

An immigrant reporter searches for truth amid the shadowy political machinations of New York City at the turn of the last century.

It’s 1907, and Archana “Archie” Morley is assigned to cover a bloody shootout at the Chinese Opera House for the Observer. The prime suspect is Mock Duck, a notorious (real-life) Chinatown gangster, who has other problems, too—the Children’s Society is threatening to remove his adopted 6-year-old daughter, Ha Oi, claiming the child was born to two white parents and has blue eyes and blond hair that was darkened to make her look more Chinese while she was living with Mock and his wife. Meanwhile, as Mayor George B. McClellan declares his intention to clean up Chinatown—which he calls “a slum, a hotbed of vice, not to mention a fire hazard”—by paving it over with a public park, Archie begins to realize there’s more to the Opera House massacre than meets the eye. If the mayor is not able to raze Chinatown, perhaps he can pressure the community to bend to his will in other ways. Then, when Mock Duck consents to a rare interview with Archie, she realizes there may be more to him than most people realize. Archie, who immigrated from India when she was 19, has also struggled to be understood and find a place where she belongs, due to her race and gender as well as the quickly transforming landscape of the newspaper business. Vatsal paints a vivid picture of New York in the early 1900s, finely colored with the issues and historical figures of the time—as well as Mock Duck, there’s the Danish American social reformer Jacob Riis and the infamous Tammany Hall political figures Charles F. Murphy and George Washington Plunkitt.

This page-turning caper explores the political, cultural, and economic forces that shaped Progressive Era New York.