Great Gatsby prequel fills in the backstory for one of literature’s greats
Gatsby’s Rival by Richard Guimond is an epic adventure story that rivets the reader from page one, with a high-stakes plot and an ensemble cast of characters as iconic as the great Gatsby himself.
Set in 1920s America as a prequel to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal 1925 work The Great Gatsby, Guimond’s novel juxtaposes socialite Jay Gatsby’s strategic efforts to amass a fortune from Rhode Island’s illicit liquor trade – so he can win over his true love, Daisy Buchanan – with the scrappy determination of his salty rival Joe Bucolo, a fisherman turned rumrunner who considers that the “10-mile waterway from Max’s Wharf to the Atlantic Ocean”, and the liquor trade that fits so neatly within it, belongs to him.
Gatsby’s Rival opens in early autumn 1922 in West Egg, Long Island, as Jay Gatsby sits at his desk in “a cheerful pink suit … with a forlorn expression and emptiness in his heart”. Daisy has not called as he had hoped she would.
He recalls his dying grandfather’s prophetic words of six months earlier: “Your weakness for her will ruin you … she will never be yours … not in any real sense. She is no longer the girl of your youth.” Nonetheless, Daisy has remained Gatsby’s obsession.
Within the pages of Gatsby’s Rival, readers are transported to Gatsby’s life before West Egg, before he was the great pretender known as The Great Gatsby. Prohibition has just become the law of the land in January 1920, and everyone believes it will last for a while. The rich still want to drink and the liquor needs to keep coming.
Boats slip in from Canada, ready to meet the most enterprising of sailors, preferably in the middle of dirty weather and a dark night when those enforcing the law will most likely stay home.
So Gatsby parks his new rum boat – Diamond Daisy – on Rhode Island’s Oakland Beach and figures out how to outsmart Bucolo, so he can make “a fortune worthy of Daisy and even more than the wealth of Tom Buchanan”.
The good-looking 31-year-old Bucolo is an intimidating rival. He has earned the name Foggy from his “skill in extreme foggy conditions, first as an oyster pirate; second for locating supply ships from the Canadian French islands of Miquelon and Saint Pierre.”
To date he has had no trouble running his boats in the worst of storms and evading the law at the same time. But his second mission – wooing Tiverton beauty Janie Thurston – puts him squarely in the sights of Tiverton’s chief of police Henry Grover because they both desire the same woman. Grover envisions himself becoming “the famous lawman who ended the career of Foggy Joe Bucolo”.
The crews for each side are as colourful as their captains. Most, to include Bucolo, are “dug-in Swamp Yankees … all hatched and raised on the eastern banks of the Seaconnet River”. Swamp Yankees – typically a Rhode Island term since it is the lowest, flattest New England state – are known to be industrious and independent rural dwellers whose families date back to the region’s colonial days.
Pearly Thurston, Bucolo’s second-in-command, resembles “an immoral Kris Kringle, always checking the women out of the corner of his eyes, always twice, always jolly”. Narcisse “Collector” Jolivet, on Gatsby’s team, is a perpetual pickpocket and a poet who speaks in rhymes.
Then there are the townspeople, such as Gertie Moore, “an overripe 48-year-old” who fancies Tiverton’s Minister Bottomley. She brings him her canned preserves and booze she has raided from her husband’s hooch. She considers Bottomley a handsome man, notwithstanding that he sits “in his robes, looking like a large duck egg”.
Books like Gatsby’s Rival are rare. Guimond himself is no stranger to the high seas and his sense of the ocean’s power and majesty comes across beautifully.
In a refreshing twist for this era, young Tiverton women stand up to their men, be they potential lovers, fathers or business partners. And to have a fresh look at one of American literature’s iconic characters is a treat.
For some of the lingering questions left by Fitzgerald’s original portrayal of Gatsby – The Great Gatsby says almost nothing about the man physically and details about Gatsby’s bootlegging are left extremely vague – Guimond fills in the spaces in a plausible and satisfying way.
Seeing the wealthy Gatsby up against a scrappy man like “Foggy Joe” Bucolo – money and love do not define him and the lack of them does not diminish any of his allure or power – gives food for thought.
Money cannot buy everything, and in Gatsby’s Rival it appears to be a lesson the besotted Gatsby has yet to learn.