Ellis Island (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Jacob Rubinstein aka Jake Rubin: Russian immigrant; songwriter; father to Laura
• Roscoe Haines: Self-exiled Black performer
• Denny Flynn: Wexford Hall (Ireland) footman smitten by Maryanne Flaherty
• Maryanne Flaherty aka Bridget O' Donnell: Irish immigrant; sister to Georgiana
• Georgiana O' Donnell aka Georgie: Sister to Bridget; lover of Marco Santorelli; contracted trachoma (conjunctivitis)
• Marco Santorelli: Italian immigrant farmer; lover of Mrs Maud Charteris; husband of Vanessa Ogden and Violet Weiler
• Tomas Banicek: Czech immigrant; WV coal mine unionizer; husband of Della father to Stanislas & Ward
• Casey O' Donnell: Uncle to Bridget & Georgie; prosperous trucking business; husband to Kathleen
• Montague Staunton: Owner of prosperous WV Staunton Mining Company that employed Tomas Banicek; head of the anti-union American Mineowners Association
• Dr Carl Travers: Ellis Island physician
• Nellie Byfield aka the Thrush from Flushing: Singing star
• Mrs Maud Charteris: English actress; wife of Senator Phipps Ogden
• Della Hopkins: Daughter of (Aunt) Edna and Ward Hopkins; wife of Tom Banicek
• Bill Fargo: Staunton's right-hand man; lead 'death vehicles'
• Sam Fuller: Bullied by Staunton to become union informer; married to Ann
• Flora Mitchum: Black songstress; introduced some of Jake Rubin's songs; married to Roscoe Haines
• Abe Shulman: Song publisher; instrumental in Jake's success
• Vanessa Ogden: Phipps Ogden's daughter by a previous marriage
• Phipps Ogden: Senator; father to Vanessa
• Violet Weiler: Daughter of Rebecca & Simon Weiler; ballerina
• Miss Una Marbury: Lesbian lover of Vanessa; bohemian
• William (Bill)l Ryan: Congressional candidate for the Silk Stocking (Italian) district of NY (against Marco Santorelli); friend of Casey O' Donnell
• Sandro Albertini: Loan shark; rose to boss of Greenwich Village; encounters with Marco
• Nadeshda Maximova Levitska: Operated a ballet studio above Carnegie Hall; Violet's adviser

Quotes edit see section history

• “"Don't end English words with a" the English signora had told him. "That's the way wops speak, and you don't want to be a wop. You want to be Italian.”

• “Most immigrants stayed, either through choice or necessity, in ethnic ghettos speaking their native language to each other and wrestling with English only when they had to. Thus they were doomed never to speak English correctly,...”

• “Harlem, which a few years before had been an all-white, middle class section of the city, was turning black with an explosive speed that was causing ugly racial tensions all over the city and pioneering a pattern that would last for generations.”

• “Jake began to understand the enormity of American racial prejudice against the blacks (there was a popular song called, unbelievably, "If the Man in the Moon Were a Coon", and it was the heyday of "pickaninny" jokes--as well as lynchings),...”

• “America was in love with the Model T, and Tom was in love with his.”

• “The breaking room was an iron shed near the mine entrance where children were employed for ten cents and hour to remove shale from the coal moving on conveyor belts to the breaking machines, which reduced the raw coal to manageable size.”

• “President Wilson is on our side. He told me last month at the White House that the war effort requires we produce as much coal as possible and that the government will do anything we ask to prevent coal production from being interrupted.”

• “This company has always been my company, and the miners have been my miners. Now all of a sudden you're calling them your miners. That's what I have against the union."”

• “It's just like the Lord, Bill: Sometimes you have to be cruel for the general good.”

• “There are Sephardic Jews like the Lazaruses, who came from Spain and Portugal. And there are the rest, who are Ashkenazim, who are Mr. Rubin and, I regret to inform you, us.”

  Simon Weiler

• “...people were becoming conscious of sexuality and were beginning to reexamine the Victorian concept of sin.”

• “But in 1916, communism was still an untested ideal, and bohemianism promised the young the heady excitement of adventure.”

• “Filthy, hairy beasts. It's obvious God made Adam first and decided He'd made an inferior product. Eve was the triumph.”

  Una Marbury

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Fred Mustard Stewart (Author)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Historical
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary