I'm Alan Alder, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

In Fitzgerald's book, there's this conflict between old money and new money.

Well, if you had money in 1945 and you

were black, that was probably new money. If you are a business person, if you are a celebrity,

doesn't matter. That's new money. But those two communities, the elite business moguls in the

black community and the black celebrities, there was a lot of tension

there because the black business community felt that the black celebrities were disparaging

the entire race by taking these demeaning roles and therefore impeding social progress.

Because everybody feels like they're constantly trying to prove themselves,

it did create conflict within the community of what's the right way to achieve black

respectability. That's Kira Davis-Lurie. She's had kind of a love-hate relationship with

F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing since she was a teenager.

And she's now written a wonderful new take on The Great Gatsby,

reimagining the story with the cast of the Black elite in post-war Los Angeles,

including such real-life characters as Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel.

This is so great. Your book, The Great Man, is having such a great reception. Congratulations.

Thank you. Yeah, it's really, really gratifying. And what I'm loving is because it's a historical fiction and how many readers have written that now they want to do a deep dive into the history.

So I can't ask for more than that.

It's fascinating.

Yeah.

You write about events in our history I never heard about before.

I'm interested in what got you started.

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