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Having just gotten married and after being kicked out of some of New York City's finest hotels\, the Fitzgeralds were\, for the first time\, in their very own place. It was a time that Scott Fitzgerald called "the happiest year s ince I was eighteen." He had\, after all\, just achieved success with his first novel\, "This Side of Paradise"\, and was suddenly awash with money.
\nThe Fitzgeralds lived a wild life of drinking\, driving\, and end less partying while living in suburban Connecticut. As it happens\, living near the beach\, they were neighbors to a larger-than-life reclusive mult i-millionaire\, F.E. Lewis.
\nHistorian Richard Webb grew up in West port a few doors down the street from where the Fitzgeralds had lived some forty years earlier. Fascinated with the Fitzgeralds\, when Webb learned that author Barbara Probst Solomon\, who grew up across the river from the F.E. Lewis estate\, proposed in the New Yorker that Westport was the real setting for Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"\, he was stirred to actively researching her claim.
\n"Boats Against the Current" tells the real story behind the famous novel and its tragic hero\, debunking the long-hel d belief that the book was solely inspired by the Fitzgerald's time in Gre at Neck\, across the Sound in Long Island\, and lays out enough informatio n about the fascinating Mr. Lewis that it is difficult not to believe that Webb has located the true inspiration for one of the most captivating and iconic characters in American literature\, the great Gatsby himself.
\ nRichard &ldquo\;Deej&rdquo\; Webb is an author\, an award-winning educ ator\, and a documentary filmmaker. A graduate of Vanderbilt University\, he has taught history for twenty-four years at both the high school and co llege levels. A featured presenter in the Connecticut Public Broadcasting Prohibition documentary Connecticut Goes Dry\, Webb is also co-creator and co-producer with Robert Williams of a documentary film about the Fitzgera lds in Connecticut\, "Gatsby in Connecticut\," which is a companion to the book "Boats Against The Current."
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