Children of Liberty
From Paullina Simons who brought you the unforgettable The Bronze Horseman comes the much-anticipated Children of Liberty.“Never forget where you came from.”At the turn of the century and the dawning of the modern world, Gina sails from Sicily to Boston’s Freedom Docks to find a new and better life, and meets Harry Barrington, who is searching for his own place in the old world of New England.She is a penniless unrefined immigrant, he a first family Boston Blue-blood, yet they are hopelessly drawn to one another. Over their denials, their separations, and over time, Gina and Harry long to be together. Yet their union would leave a path of destruction in its wake that will swallow two families.
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Children of Liberty
Paullina Simons
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2012
Copyright © Paullina Simons 2012
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2012
Cover photograph © Aria Baro/Trevillion Images
Paullina Simons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007241569
Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780007484034
Version: 2015-03-31
To my good friend Nick,
without whom this book, and many things,
might never have been
The world was all before them, where to choose
John Milton
Each of us Inevitable;
Each of us Limitless—
Walt Whitman
Contents
Part One: The Barber’s Daughter
Chapter One: Daughter of the Revolution
Chapter Four: Great Expectations
Chapter Six: A Sunday in a Small Town
Chapter Seven: Immigrants, Debutantes, Students
Chapter Eight: The Rewards of Mission Work
Chapter Nine: The Natives and the Pilgrims
Chapter Ten: In the Boston Winter
Chapter Thirteen: Minstrel Songs
Chapter Fourteen: The High Priestess of Anarchy
Chapter Fifteen: On their Knees by the Sea
Chapter Sixteen: Violet Catastrophe
Chapter Seventeen: The Marble Faun
Part One
THE BARBER’S DAUGHTER
Love—what is love? A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair
Robert Louis Stevenson
Chapter One
DAUGHTER OF THE REVOLUTION
THERE had been a fire at Ellis Island the year before Gina came to America with her mother and brother in 1899, and so instead of arriving at the Port of New York, they had set sail into the Port of Boston.
Salvo had been in a bad mood since the day they left Napoli. He had left his sweetheart behind—the girl wouldn’t part with her family. This, among other things, soured him on his. He refused to stay with the girl he loved, but resented his family for his own choice. “As if Mimoo and Gina could go to America by themselves,” he scoffed.
“We don’t have to go, Salvo,” his mother said, and meant it.
“Mimoo!” cried Gina. “What would Papa say?”
“Papa, Papa. Well, where is he, if he is so clever?”
It was summer and Gina wished for a cloudless day. She stood at port on tiptoe and gaped at the sky, wishing for a view of what they had been sailing to for weeks: a city line across the wide open bay to show them the glimpse of a life that was just around the corner. Stretching up she squinted straight into the July fog, her palm in salute to focus her sights on what she had imagined was urban beauty: sprawling metropolis bustling, smokestacks billowing, ships to and fro, civilization. But she could see nothing beyond the thick slate mist and oppressive melancholy. “Ahoy, Salvo!” she called, despite the lack of sight. “Come see!”
Salvo did not come see. Like a sack he sat behind her on the main deck and smoked, his arm around his black-clad mother. They had just lost their father. Five of them had been planning to go to America for seven years, but Gina’s oldest brother had been killed in a knife fight six months ago. A drunken mob had run amok, Antonio had got caught in the middle, there was a struggle with the police, people trampled by horses. It wasn’t a military knife that had taken him, but a hunting knife. Like it mattered—Antonio was still dead.
And less than three months later Papa’s heart stopped.
Papa had wanted to go when the children were still small, but Mimoo refused. She wouldn’t go without money. Imagine! Going to America, starting a new life with nothing. Assurdo! She wasn’t going to come to America a village pauper. But we are village paupers, Mimoo, the great Alessandro had said. He didn’t argue further, there was no point. Gina’s mother declared that when she came to America, she would walk in on her own two feet, not crawl in with her hand outstretched. Papa agreed with that, but then he died.
Some of the money the Attavianos had saved went for Alessandro’s funeral. But Mimoo had promised her husband she would go to America no matter what, and so, a month after he was buried, they borrowed just enough for three steerage beds. When Gina said borrowed, she meant stole: her mother’s older sister took the money from the kitchen lock box of their blind father, putting a note inside which he couldn’t read, saying that the “debt” would be repaid when Mimoo and her children got on their feet in the new land.
