No One Is Coming to Save Us
Stephanie Powell Watts borrows the bones of The Great Gatsby and moves the story to a small, fading furniture town in North Carolina. JJ Ferguson comes home rich and builds a grand house on a hill, hoping to win back Ava, the woman he loved as a young man, who is now married and longing for a child. Around them, Watts draws a whole Black family and community wrestling with ambition, money, and the gap between the lives they wanted and the ones they got. It became the first selection for Sarah Jessica Parker's ALA Book Club Central.
What you might want to know about No One Is Coming to Save Us
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A reimagining of The Great Gatsby set among a Black family in a declining North Carolina factory town, where a prodigal son returns chasing a faded dream.
Loosely, yes. It reimagines the Gatsby story among a Black family in small-town North Carolina, with a returning, newly wealthy man trying to win back a lost love.
Yes. It was the first selection Sarah Jessica Parker made as honorary chair of the American Library Association's Book Club Central, in 2017.
No One Is Coming to Save Us was written by Stephanie Powell Watts, published in 2017 by Ecco.
No One Is Coming to Save Us is 384 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, No One Is Coming to Save Us takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
No One Is Coming to Save Us is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
