SOURCE: "A Vivid First Novel Chronicles the Irish Draft Riots of 1863," in The Boston Globe, April 30, 1994, p. 23.

[In the following review, Cullen offers praise for Banished Children of Eve, calling it "a compelling, textured account."]

When Irish-Americans sit down to write fiction about their forebears, they tend to produce romantic epics, chronicling how their ancestors overcame overwhelming odds, poverty and oppression to prosper in the New World. They are comfortable books, warm respites.

Peter Quinn's first novel, Banished Children of Eve, is like a January dip in the Liffey or, more appropriately, New York's East River, on whose banks dozens of bodies washed up during the summer of 1863, when in a fit of anger and resentment Irish immigrants led riots against the nation's first draft and, because they had no one else to take out their frustrations on, lynched blacks.

Quinn is the chief speechwriter for Time-Warner and...