The Orphanmaster, Jean Zimmerman
The Orphanmaster, Jean Zimmerman
1 Rating(s)
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The Orphanmaster

Author: Jean Zimmerman

Narrator: George Guidall

Unabridged: 15 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 06/19/2012

Synopsis

A love story wrapped around a murder mystery, set in seventeenth-century Manhattan

In 1663 in the hardscrabble colony of New Amsterdam—today’s lower Manhattan—orphan children are going missing and residents suspect a serial killer. The list of possible culprits is long and strange. Among those looking into the mystery are a shrewd young Dutch woman, Blandine van Couvering, and a dashing Englishman, Edward Drummond, whose newfound romance is threatened by horrible accusations.
            In this spellbinding work of historical fiction, Jean Zimmerman relates the harsh realities of life in early Manhattan, re-creating the sights, smells, and textures of the rough settlement surrounded by wilderness and subject to political turmoil. Compulsively readable and filled with New York history, The Orphanmaster will delight fans of Caleb Carr, Hilary Mantel, and Geraldine Brooks.

About The Author

Jean Zimmerman collaborated with Felice Schwartz on Breaking with Tradition: Women and Work, the New Facts of Life and was the author of Tailspin: Women at War in the Wake of Tailhook. Her husband, Gil Reavill, is a freelance journalist. They live in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, with their daughter.George Guidall is one of the foremost narrators in the audiobook industry, having recorded more than 800 unabridged novels. His 40-year career includes leading roles on- and off-Broadway and numerous appearances in film and television. He has won an Obie Award for best performance.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Barbara on November 05, 2021

3.5 stars Though there's a mystery at the heart of this story, the book's strongest suit is its depiction of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in the 1660s. New Amsterdam's Director-General, Petrus Stuyvesant, rules under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company, whose main goal is to make money......more

Goodreads review by Alyssa on May 19, 2017

The best thing about The Orphanmaster is its historical detail. Zimmerman does an excellent job of setting the scene and integrating issues and concerns the colonists had during that time. The legend of the witika was delightfully horrific, and I enjoyed reading about it. This story has lots of dram......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on June 27, 2012

This is one of the best historical/mystery/suspense books I've ever read. Author Jean Zimmerman has written an incredibly compelling novel about life, love and murder in New Amsterdam (lower Manhattan) in 1660. Ms. Zimmerman's attention to detail and knowledge of life and the history of the early da......more

Quotes

 
Praise for The Orphanmaster:

“The Orphanmaster is a sweeping novel of great and precise imaginative intelligence; it's also the most entertaining and believable historical novel I've read in years. Jean Zimmerman is a debut novelist who already writes like an old master. Read any page of The Orphanmaster and you'll become an instant fan.” – Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and Chang and Eng


“Jean Zimmerman's seventeenth-century New Amsterdam teems with enough intrigue, lust, and madness to give our twenty-first-century Big Apple a run for its money. And money is what drives this book – liberating, corrupting, forming the only bulwark against a terrifying, chaotic New World. Zimmerman's wit and humanity shine light in a dark woods, creating an uncommonly rich debut.” – Sheri Holman, author of The Dress Lodger

 “Here’s American history turned inside out, animated by Jean Zimmerman’s prodigious imagination. Monsters lurk in the shadows, chaos presses in, legends come alive, and one adventure leads with irresistible force to the next. The Orphanmaster is a breathtaking achievement.” – Joanna Scott, author of Arrogance and Various Antidotes

“[A] compulsively readable, heartbreaking, and grisly mystery set in a wild colonial America.” – ALA Booklist

“A feisty young Dutch woman, an English spy, and a local demon all cross paths in 1663 New Amsterdam, in this Ludlumesque historical thriller…a successful mix of historical fiction, spy thriller, and horror.” – Library Journal

"As in the best historical fiction, [Zimmerman] has created a kind of truce between the authority of the past and the accessibility of the present, revealing to us what it once meant to be alive, and what that history means to us now ... on nearly every page there is some unobtrusively offered word or description, of food, of architecture, of dress, that brings the period and its people into clearer focus." – USA Today

"Absorbing period fiction with the requisite colorful characters of the era." – The New York Daily News

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