First up: A deep look at where Hillary Clinton's campaign may have gone wrong
Kerri Miller's Must-Read
"No One Is Coming To Save Us"by Stephanie Powell Watts
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One of the first notes I made as I read the opening pages of this terrific novel was that it had a Gatsby-esque sensibility to it. And Stephanie Watts’ dedication, “For Bob and Auden, forever my green lights,” obviously contributed to that.
What I didn’t know, until I heard her interview on NPR last week, was that Gatsby is deliberately stamped all over this story, from the newly rich young man, JJ, who returns to his hometown to build a mansion, to the fragile and troubled woman, Ava, who he’s loved since they were teens.
Watts said in the interview that while she admired Fitzgerald’s novel from her first reading, she wondered why the women in the story had such bit parts: “I'm seeing the women and the tiny, tiny roles that they have in the book, and I want them to speak. I want to hear what they have to say." Her novel goes a long way in rectifying that.
But the Gatsby vibe isn't the reason to read this book. It is so, so much more.
Watts set her novel in a small North Carolina town, where young black men end up doing long prison stints for drug crimes; where good jobs are scarce and the social services intake office is busy; and where JJ knows that “you don’t get over being poor,” even when you have money.
It's a timely, beautiful story that deserves a spot on the shelf next to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
-K.M.
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