''Dreamland'' is a 1999 novel by American author Kevin Baker, published by

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...

Publishers. It centers on the colorful underworld of turn-of-the-century

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, with much of the action taking place at Dreamland amusement park in

Coney Island Coney Island is a peninsular neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, Manhattan Beach to its east, L ...

. Many of the characters and events in Dreamland are based on real, historical accounts and people. For example; Kid Twist,

Gyp the Blood Gyp is a word for cheating or swindling. Gyp or GYP may refer to: __NOTOC__ People * Gyp Casino, Swedish drummer Jesper Sporre (born 1961) * Gyp Mills, English sculptor and songwriter David John Mills (born 1946-2019) * Angelo DeCarlo (1902– ...

General Tom Thumb Charles Sherwood Stratton (January 4, 1838 – July 15, 1883), better known by his stage name "General Tom Thumb", was an American dwarf who achieved great fame as a performer under circus pioneer P. T. Barnum. Childhood and early life Bo ...

, his wife

Lavinia Warren Mercy Lavinia Warren Stratton ( Bump; October 31, 1841https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/warren-lavinia-1841-1919 – November 25, 1919) was an American proportionate dwarf, who was a circus perform ...

and

Timothy Sullivan Timothy Daniel Sullivan (July 23, 1862 – August 31, 1913) was a New York politician who controlled Manhattan's Bowery and Lower East Side districts as a prominent leader within Tammany Hall. He was known euphemistically as "Dry Dollar", as the ...

are all central characters in the book, and a major story arc follows a popular criminal trial of the period. ''Dreamland'' is the first volume in publication order of Baker's City of Fire trilogy of historical novels on New York City, the others being ''Paradise Alley'' (2002) and ''Striver's Row'' (2006).

References

1999 American novels American historical novels Novels set in Brooklyn HarperCollins books Coney Island in fiction {{1990s-hist-novel-stub Novels set in New York City