In a novel with multivarious points of view, Sylvia functions as sometime narrator and constant beating heart she’s trying, like all of her fellow citizens, to become known and to matter to someone else. This is where Watts comes into her own and her purpose in paying homage to Fitzgerald becomes clear: Pinewood has no Nick Carraway, but it does have Ava’s mother, Sylvia. When Henry is caught philandering, Ava and Jay get caught up in their old cycle-but in a town populated by people without jobs or purpose, it’s difficult to say whether or not the course of true love could run smooth even if one of the nearby furniture factories planed it so. Unfortunately, Ava is now married to the feckless Henry and caught up in trying to conceive after many miscarriages and failed fertility treatments. Yet he feels impoverished, aching with love for his high-school girlfriend Ava he wants to win her back with his material gains. Jay (that’s what he’d like to be called, except that everyone in Pinewood refers to him as “JJ”) is a rich man, although no one knows exactly how his real-estate dealings have made him so.
Set in the fictional town of Pinewood, the story begins as JJ (Jay) Ferguson has returned home to build a mansion on a hill.
That’s how Stephanie Powell Watts, prize-winning author of the acclaimed short-story collection We Are Taking Only What We Need, describes her debut novel No One Is Coming to Save Us. “Imagine The Great Gatsby set in rural North Carolina, nine decades later, with desperate black people.”
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