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The World of Tomorrow: Brendan Mathews with Mary Beth Keane

In an exhilarating debut novel set during the 1939–40 World’s Fair, three brothers are caught up in a whirlwind week of love, blackmail, and betrayal culminating in an assassination plot.

June 1939. Francis Dempsey and his shell-shocked brother Michael are on an ocean liner from Ireland bound for their brother Martin’s home in New York City, having stolen a small fortune from the IRA. During the week that follows, the lives of these three brothers collide spectacularly with big-band jazz musicians, a talented but fragile heiress, a Jewish street photographer facing a return to Nazi-occupied Prague, a retired assassin, a vengeful mob boss, and the ghosts of their own family’s revolutionary past.

From the jazz clubs of Harlem to the Plaza Hotel, from the garrets in the Bowery to the shadowy warehouses of Hell’s Kitchen, Brendan Mathews brings new life to a New York of bygone days. He will speak with author Mary Beth Keane about reconstructing that lost past and composing the intricate storytelling that reveals an America which blithely hoped it could avoid another catastrophic war and focus instead on the promise of the World’s Fair: a peaceful, prosperous “World of Tomorrow.”











When: Tue., Oct. 17, 2017 at 6:30 pm
Where: New York Public Library—Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
476 Fifth Ave.
917-275-6975
Price: Free
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In an exhilarating debut novel set during the 1939–40 World’s Fair, three brothers are caught up in a whirlwind week of love, blackmail, and betrayal culminating in an assassination plot.

June 1939. Francis Dempsey and his shell-shocked brother Michael are on an ocean liner from Ireland bound for their brother Martin’s home in New York City, having stolen a small fortune from the IRA. During the week that follows, the lives of these three brothers collide spectacularly with big-band jazz musicians, a talented but fragile heiress, a Jewish street photographer facing a return to Nazi-occupied Prague, a retired assassin, a vengeful mob boss, and the ghosts of their own family’s revolutionary past.

From the jazz clubs of Harlem to the Plaza Hotel, from the garrets in the Bowery to the shadowy warehouses of Hell’s Kitchen, Brendan Mathews brings new life to a New York of bygone days. He will speak with author Mary Beth Keane about reconstructing that lost past and composing the intricate storytelling that reveals an America which blithely hoped it could avoid another catastrophic war and focus instead on the promise of the World’s Fair: a peaceful, prosperous “World of Tomorrow.”

Buy tickets/get more info now