America in 1953 seems hell-bent on squandering the flood tide of international goodwill earned in WWII. Senator Joe McCarthy is on a red-hunting rampage in Washington, and the fledgling CIA under Allen Dulles is starting to dabble in nation-building.
Into this moment of history wander Nick Carraway and Jake Barnes, refugees from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. They begin a correspondence that leads to a close friendship, and widens to include a bizarre cast of characters. From the classic fiction of the period come Larry Darrell (The Razor's Edge), Alden Pyle (The Quiet American), Lady Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn (The Sun Also Rises), and from real life, Roy Cohn (Robert’s nephew) and his pal Davey Schine, Roy’s boss Joe McCarthy, French intellectuals Sartre and de Beauvoir, Iranian premier Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, and sex-change pioneer Christine Jorgensen. Jake discovers a CIA plot to cause a coup in France, and Nick and Jake must do their best to save their country from itself while affairs of the heart change both of their lives. Nick & Jake finds the uproarious comic potential in a chilling period of American history that has alarming echoes in our own.
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
“Nick & Jake is a hysterical stroll through the Cold War era with many of the most colorful characters of that time. . . . It is a wonderful tale of American expatriates dabbling in big power intrigue without ever forsaking the three-martini lunch.” —Joseph C. Wilson, former diplomat and presidential advisor
“Goofy, funny, and full of literary in-jokes . . . this is a rollicking good read.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
