The Last Days of Night

The novel begins in Manhattan on May 11, 1888, when Paul meets Thomas Edison. In attempting to untangle electrical wires (a new phenomenon in the city), a workman inadvertently electrocutes himself and violently burns to death above hundreds of New Yorkers on Broadway Street. Everyone on the street panics at this traumatizing event.

Paul saves a newsboy from the hooves of a rearing carriage horse. Firefighters arrive to put out the electrical fire, a kind of fire no one has ever seen before, and Paul watches every detail of the process, “not to remember, but to forget” (5). As an attorney, Paul relies on his linear story-making ability to process and file information to reach dichotomous moral conclusions.

Working late after the day’s incident, Paul receives a frightening telegram: “But as it turned out, a flaming corpse over Broadway was only the second most terrifying thing that Paul Cravath would see that day” (6). The telegram is an urgent bid for Paul to meet, in strict confidence, Thomas Edison.

Paul has been representing George Westinghouse in litigation against Edison for months, but this is the first time they are meeting in person. In the cab to Edison’s fashionable downtown office, the driver reveals some of the mythology around, and curated by Edison, including his nickname of “the Wizard,” and the fact that his mother died long ago: “He makes miracles.