Ragtime (book)
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | Ragtime |
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| Author: | E.L. Doctorow |
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| Publisher: | Plume |
The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow’s imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.
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Related works
Based on the popular novel by E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime tells the story of four New York families at the turn of the 20th century. Starving immigrant artist, Tateh sets off to make his fortune in Hollywood, but along the way encounters showgirl Evelyn Nesbit who is at the center of a murder investigation. Meanwhile, an upper-class family finds their seemingly perfect existence ruined when black pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr. begins to romance a pregnant girl living in their home.
