BOOK REVIEW : NOVEL : Struggling to Survive in a World of Hate : BANISHED CHILDREN OF EVE <i> by Peter Quinn</i> , Viking, $22.95, 612 pages

When most of us try to conjure up images of Civil War-era New York, we think of ornate drawing rooms populated by ladies in voluminous gowns and urbane, frock-coated men puffing on cigars. “Banished Children of Eve,” Peter Quinn’s exceptional debut novel, presents the far more earthy New York of yesteryear. According to him, it was a grotesquely primitive and savage place or, as the book itself puts it, “a vast nether world of poverty, resentment and ethnic hatred.”

Spanning 10 days in the spring and summer of 1863, this historical tale, a bit reminiscent of E.L. Doctorow’s “Ragtime,” loosely interweaves the destinies of many fictitious and actual people.

We meet Jimmy Dunne, a wily con man whose brittle exterior camouflages vestiges of decency; Charles Bedford, the stockbroker with a troublesome appetite for gambling; volatile Jack Mulcahey, a minstrel performer who slathers burnt cork on his face and struts onstage disguised as a black man; Mulcahey’s lover, Eliza, an actress of mixed ancestry whose spunk almost exceeds her beauty, and Stephen Foster, the nearly penniless tunesmith who guzzles liquor to forget that his ebbing imagination won’t even yield a tidbit of quality music.

Quinn, chief speech writer at Time Warner, enlivens his narrative with cameo appearances by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Prince of Wales and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, among others. The novel’s intensity, however, stems from Quinn’s wrenching portrayal of the dolorous existence of the Irish immigrants in America, who had already faced seemingly endless calamities in their native land.

One typical newcomer is Bedford’s maid, Margaret O’Driscoll. Like thousands of others, she journeyed here because, as Quinn explains, there was virtually nothing worthwhile to aspire to in Ireland, “a country haunted by the memory of hunger, humiliated by the improvidence of its children, the wrath of God visited upon them.”

Unfortunately, when the boat carrying Margaret docks at these shores, the first American she sees utters a greeting sour enough to disenchant the hardiest adventurer: “Well, ladies and gents, welcome to hell.”

For Margaret, along with most of the Irish depicted in “Banished Children of Eve,” New York does resemble a nightmare. Although she anticipated a metropolis alive with opportunities, this earnest young woman quickly realizes that, at least to the have-nots, it is merely a hotbed of squalor and vice where saloons, music halls and brothels cater to individuals who might euphemistically be defined as “riffraff.”

Before joining the Bedford household, Margaret lived in a roach-infested tenement and took a job at a factory where employees received pathetic wages for exhausting physical labor. Her situation brightens greatly after she starts work at the Bedfords’, but Margaret’s idealism has been permanently curbed, thanks to the knowledge that downtrodden folks like her could ascend in American society via only three routes: outright lawlessness, cunning or luck.

The lowly need all the good fortune they can muster. Overt antagonism flourishes between Protestant Yankees and Catholic immigrants, the gentry and the paupers, and especially Irish and blacks, writes Quinn, who sketches these hostilities in flashbacks.

For example, when Mulcahey sojourned in Boston as a boy, three ruffians his age taunted him, then gave him a wholly unwarranted beating. A kind passerby stopped the assault and dispensed some wisdom to Mulcahey, too. The Yankees “will ship the lot of us back to Ireland if they have the chance,” the man declared, “but not before they’ve made sure they’ve wrung us dry.”

Quinn has chosen to emphasize such historical themes instead of using his literary craftsmanship to concoct elaborate plot twists or spotlight character development and interaction. Thus, “Banished Children of Eve” is atmospheric and cerebral, rather than tautly suspenseful. Nevertheless, an offbeat cat-and-mouse chase is particularly gripping.

Bedford, who rises to the venerated position of director at a stockbrokerage mainly by lying about his humble family background, undergoes a series of war-related business fiascoes so dire that his usual swagger vanishes. To pay off his debts, he resorts to gambling and embezzlement, avenues by which he can secretly amass thousands of dollars.

But a hood named Waldo Capshaw learns about Bedford’s plight and enlists the wary Dunne in a scheme to rob this ignoble titan of commerce of his ill-gotten treasure. Meanwhile, New York’s prolonged social turmoil culminates in violence as feverish mobs jam the streets to air their loathing of a new law mandating conscription. Whether Bedford, Dunne, Mulcahey and everyone else will survive the widespread rampage known as the Draft Riots is a question left tantalizingly unresolved until the book’s final scenes.

Quinn masterfully communicates the irony of the fact that men and women endured tremendous risks when they fled Ireland to seek better prospects in urban America, where further degradation, exploitation and oppression awaited them.

An equally painful irony applied to northern blacks during the Civil War, Quinn points out. Although free from metal shackles, they were subjected to symbolic bondage. Obliged to grapple with the racial prejudices of whites, blacks had scant economic mobility, therefore, they found themselves pitted against the Irish for the most menial jobs.

The author’s pungent style, refusal to romanticize and affinity for historical details all blend to make “Banished Children of Eve” an achingly vibrant panorama of ethnic feuds and struggles.