Vendor
	Liepman Literary Agency Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE US

Stephanie Powell Watts

The Great Gatsby brilliantly recast in the contemporary south: a powerful first novel about an extended African-American family and their colliding visions of the American dream

A modern-era Gatsby story transposed to a small, North Carolina town, where an extended family of middle-class African-Americans struggles to get on with their lives. Ava wants a baby although cannot seem to carry one to term. Husband Henry is depressed and barely surviving the demise of the furniture industry, which has sent production to China and stripped the area of jobs, sending the town into decline. Mother Sylvia tries to keep everyone going while mourning the loss of her only son, while her stray dog of an ex-husband Don hangs around just long enough to stay in the picture. Into this mix comes the newly-wealthy Jay JJ to Sylvia who wants to woo childhood sweetheart Ava in the most extravagant way possible by building a huge mansion overlooking the town. How these people navigate their lives includes both humor, heartbreak and uplift, reworking the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic for a new generation.

STEPHANIE POWELL WATTS is the winner of numerous awards for her short stories including the Whiting Award, the Pushcart Prize and an Ernest Gaines award. She has been included in the Best New Stories from the South, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Jones, and in Best American Short Stories, edited by
Stephen King. She received the Southern Women's Writers Award for Emerging Writer of the Year. She is currently Assistant Professor of English at Lehigh University.

Available products
Book Published 2017-04-01 by Ecco/HarperCollins

Comments

"The ways in which No One Is Coming to Save Us intersects with and veers away from Fitzgerald's familiar plot can be very rewarding. Every departure can be seen as a sly comment on what it means to be a person of color in today's America." Read more...

"Lorrie Moore meets Eudora Welty"

"Gatsby' gets a revolutionary reboot" Read more...

"To call Watts "promising" would diminish her significant accomplishments, which include a Whiting Award and a Pushcart Prize for her short fiction. In the best possible way, this is the kind of book that makes a reader yearn for her next one." Read more...

"Watts, with her knowing touch and full-bodied prose, delivers a resonant meditation on life and the comfort both in dreaming and in moving forward."

16 debut novels to read in 2017 Read more...

[Watts'] great gift is her instinct for empathy...No One is Coming to Save Us proves to be not just a pleasure on its own terms, but also a compassionate and well-timed social commentary, wherein people like us endeavor, falter, and finally endure.

Wistful, eloquent, heartfelt and humane...[Watts] channels Toni Morrison's masterful direct address with great success... The overwhelming power of this remarkable novel rests in its ability to face excruciating truths with optimism through its singing prose

Watts winks at Gatsby while shining her literary light on black women...The American dream served with sweet tea, sympathy and deep insights.

They say if you love something, you should set it free. Not so in Stephanie Powell Watts' powerful debut novel...This timely novel sheds its green light on economic and emotional heartbreak and the spaces where the living meet the dead.

A strong story of hope and pain and longing...Watts excels at showing the dense relationships among characters as they strive for hope and reinvention...A memorable and moving tale.

Watts's book envisions a backwoods African-American version of The Great Gatsby. The circumstances of her characters are vastly unlike Fitzgerald's, and those differences are what make this novel so moving. Janet Maslin, New York Times

"The Great Gatsby is revived in an accomplished debut novel. Winner of a Pushcart Prize and other awards for her short fiction, Watts (We Are Taking Only What We Need, 2011) spins a compelling tale of obsessive love and dashed dreams set in a struggling North Carolina town. (...) Watts' gently told story, like Fitzgerald's, is only superficially about money but more acutely about the urgent, inexplicable needs that shape a life." Read more...

Brilliant, timely... The premise and plot are so clever... [Watts] has done something marvelous here, demonstrating that the truths illuminated in a classic American novel are just as powerful for black Americans.

Watts, author of a short-story collection, We Are Taking Only What We Need (2011), and winner of a Whiting Award and an Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, explores The Great Gatsby's themes of yearning, loss, hope, and disillusion in her powerhouse debut novel. Set in today's South and delving into African American family life, the story primarily focuses on Sylvia, a middle-aged mother, and Ava, her thirtysomething daughter. They live in the same house and occupy complicated marriages that reveal both the tenuous and tenacious bonds of love. Other life-weary, imperfect characters reflect the economically depressed, near-ghost town, which somehow beckons Gatsbyesque JJ (now Jay), to return with his accumulated wealth and dreams of recapturing the best of his past. Watts' lyrical writing and seamless floating between characters' viewpoints make for a harmonious narrative chorus. This feels like an important, largely missing part of our ongoing American story. Ultimately, Watts offers a human tale of resilience and the universally understood drive to hang on and do whatever it takes to save oneself.

"Stephanie Powell Watts offers an impressive debut that promises only wonderful work to come .Watts show us people, real souls like the people we sit next to on the bus, people who live down the hall, people who could be relatives."

Watts excels at physical descriptions that give texture to the world of the novel In the best possible way, this is the kind of book that makes a reader yearn for her next one.

The Most Exciting Fiction Books of 2017's First Half: "This universally resonant story of the American Dream is a poignant examination of family and human nature." Read more...