SOURCE: "The Bowery Sphinx and Other Irishmen: A First Novel about Immigrant Life in New York City during the Civil War," in The New York Times Book Review, April 3, 1994, p. 29.

[In the following positive review, Crowley describes Banished Children of Eve as "the mature fruit of protracted labor."]

There are two readers for any historical novel: the one who knows well the history on which it is based and the one who doesn't. Some novels depend for their effect on the reader's knowledge; some are spoiled by it. Readers of Banished Children of Eve, Peter Quinn's panoptic novel of New York City during the Civil War, need not know which of his many characters and incidents derive from his sources and which are invented, and he has worked those sources so artfully that readers who don't know already won't be able to guess.

The Irish who left for...