Nicole D'entremont

City of Belief Nicole D'entremont

On Nov. 9, 1965 at 5:20 in the morning a young man stood before a darkened United Nations building, doused himself with gasoline and struck a match. At 5:20 that evening, New York City plunged into its first major power blackout. Within the arc of those two events resides City of Belief. Set in and around a soup kitchen on the Lower East Side, the book is populated with Bowery habitues, young people in the anti-war movement, and the legendary figures of A. J. Muste and Dorothy Day. Into this mix arrives Jonathan Le Blanc and events unfold. City of Belief is a story of the war in Vietnam, FBI surveillance, protest, arrest, the mundane acts of peeling potatoes, handing out clothes and the startling act of self-immolation. It is also a story of faith and of belief in things unseen.