Crusoe in New York, and Other Tales

What if Robinson Crusoe never sailed the seas, but learned carpentry on the streets of 1880s New York instead? Edward Everett Hale pulls off a delightful trick in this collection: he takes Defoe's immortal castaway and transplants him into the industrializing, immigrant-thronged city of his own era. The result is both loving tribute and radical reimagining. In the title story, young Crusoe is an orphan raised by his mother, apprenticed to a traditional carpenter, dreaming of building her a house on a vacant lot. The desert island becomes the competitive, unforgiving city itself; the struggle for survival becomes the struggle for dignity and belonging. The collection wanders through whimsical tales and quieter, more poignant reflections, but always returns to Hale's core conviction: that ordinary life, stubbornly pursued, is its own kind of adventure. The New York he captures is gone now, but the human aspirations haven't changed.