One Wonderful Night: A Romance of New York

About the book

Engineer John Delancy Curtis approaches New York with the excitement of someone who knows the city largely through maps and imagination. He has scarcely begun his visit when a killing brings a stranger's marriage license into his possession. His decision to find the woman named in it leads him to Lady Hermione and a predicament involving family pressure, an unwanted suitor, and an urgent need for help. Tracy organizes much of the action by the advancing hours, allowing one impulsive intervention to produce another before the night is over. Police inquiries and social complications run alongside the developing romance. The result is an urban adventure in which taxis, hotels, and sudden introductions make the apparently vast city feel like an intensely connected stage.

• Chance and intervention
• Marriage and independence
• Urban adventure

Why read it

The clock-based chapters give the improbable encounters an energetic sense of continuous motion.

English Grosset and Dunlap text with the 1912 Clode copyright and a motion-picture foreword