by Mark Helprin (Get the Book)In this prodigious, enfolding saga of exalted romance in corrupt, postwar New York, resplendent storyteller Helprin (Freddy and Fredericka, 2005) creates a supremely gifted and principled hero. Harry is a Jewish special-ops WWII paratrooper (we learn all the throttling details in sustained flashbacks) who has just returned home from the front to find his family's top-of-the-line leather goods company failing in the wake of his father's death. Harry is determined to rescue it and to learn the identity of the beautiful woman he spies on the Staten Island Ferry. Catherine turns out to be a level-headed, musical, blue-blooded heiress. As their against-tough-odds love grows in sync with Harry's unexpectedly perilous business woes, Harry is caught between his rigorous ethics and pride and the tempting wealth and ease that marriage to Catherine could bring. Helprin's suspenseful, many-stranded plot is unfailingly enthralling. The sumptuous settings are intoxicating. The novel's seething indictment of mobster rule in the 1940s is bracing, and the lovers' high-stakes predicaments are heartbreaking. Helprin's personal articles of faith shape every scene as he expresses deep respect for soldiers, sensitivity to anti-Semitism and racism, and stalwart belief in valor and individual exceptionalism. So declarative is this philosophical tale that it can be read as Helprin's spiritual and lyrical answer to the big, bossy, and enduring novels of Ayn Rand. --Booklist
