The Last Green Light — George Foy

The Great Gatsby is known for the glitz and glamour of Gilded Age plutocrats; in The Last Green Light, the working people of Fitzgerald's novel get to tell their own, beautifully textured tale. Meet Jon Laine, a Midwesterner who captains one of the rumrunning boats that are the source of Gatsby's great wealth; enter a colorful netherworld of diner cooks, dump scavengers, secretaries, deckhands and car mechanics caught in the increasingly deadly conflict between organized crime syndicates, amid the murderous passions of caste-busting love. From movie stars to dark freighters, Wobblies to Harlem nightclubs The Last Green Light, like a jazz improvisation, riffs on a great American novel, creating its own, unique world in the process.