REVIEW 'Empire Rising' proves to be a towering tale

Empire State Building's construction provides the backdrop for the novel.
By JEROME WEEKS
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
"Empire Rising" by Thomas Kelly; Farrar, Straus & amp; Giroux ($25)
Most of an entire episode in Ric Burns' majestic PBS documentary "New York" was devoted to the 1930 construction of the Empire State Building -- it was started just as the Depression crippled the city but pursued at a breakneck pace (an entire floor completed every day). For anyone who was moved by the drama of that human and technological feat, Thomas Kelly's novel "Empire Rising" will strike a familiar chord: somber, epic and cocksure all at once.
Wheels within wheels
Highfalutin claims should not be made for the novel: It's mostly a noir-ish, period melodrama. But having written several thrillers about racketeering in the New York building trades, Kelly (a former construction worker and mayoral aide) has found in that signature skyscraper a big-city, blue-collar story with scope: the story of Irish immigrants, the Italian mob, Tammany Hall and Mayor "Gentleman Jimmy" Walker himself. Plus, of course, "the Eighth Wonder of the World" as it makes its girder-and-granite ascent toward heaven.
"Empire Rising" is founded on the romance between Michael Briody, an assassin and gunrunner for the Irish Republican Army who is hiding out with a rivet crew, and Grace Masterson, an Irish immigrant artist who is painting the Empire State's construction. She is also the mistress, however, of Johnny Farrell, Mayor Walker's powerful point man for bribery.
Nothing gets built in New York, Kelly observes, without payoffs -- and politics. It's through these processes that he connects his lovers to larger wheels within wheels -- from seedy East Side bars full of revolutionaries and bootleggers all the way to Albany, where Gov. Franklin Roosevelt wants to dig up dirt on Tammany Hall, as a way of distancing himself from the corrupt Democratic machine to clear the way for his run at the presidency.
Tough tale
It's not too farfetched to see "Empire Rising" in terms of the skyscraper itself, its weaknesses and wonders: The Empire State Building lacks the silvery beauty of its compatriot, the Chrysler Building, but it was not as dull and corporate-engineered as the Twin Towers. The Empire State is not just tall; it's big-shouldered, the largest, fattest fact on the Manhattan skyline. It remains an embodiment of New York money, power, raw ambition and muscle.
Similarly, "Empire Rising" grabs us with its panoramic feel for how a skyscraper, how a city, works. Along the way, Kelly can create a touching, elusive, minor figure like Mayor Walker -- the former dance man sadly aware of his charm and easy graft, ennobled a little by that sad awareness.
On the other hand, some of Kelly's characters remain stubbornly hollow -- either noble and brawny or WASPy and bigoted -- and while he's unafraid of melodrama, he resorts to it too often toward the end.
Still, if Kelly's not profound, he's compelling. "Empire Rising" is a richly entertaining yarn -- with the feel of those classic black-and-white shots by Lewis Wickes Hine, photos of brawny workmen dangling in midair from cables, showered in welding sparks, all of New York City below them.