Boston, 1926. The ''20s are roaring. Liquor is flowing, bullets
are flying, and one man sets out to make his mark on the world.
Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground
distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. Joe
Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain,
has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing.
Now having graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in
the pay of the city''s most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the
spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw.
But life on the dark side carries a heavy price. In a time when
ruthless men of ambition, armed with cash, illegal booze, and guns,
battle for control, no one-neither family nor friend, enemy nor
lover-can be trusted. Beyond money and power, even the threat of
prison, one fate seems most likely for men like Joe: an early
death. But until that day, he and his friends are determined to
live life to the hilt.
Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of organized
crime that takes him from the flash of Jazz Age Boston to the
sensual shimmer of Tampa''s Latin Quarter to the sizzling streets
of Cuba. Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with a
diverse cast of loyal friends and callous enemies, tough rumrunners
and sultry femmes fatales, Bible-quoting evangelists and cruel
Klansmen, all battling for survival and their piece of the American
dream. At once a sweeping love story and a compelling saga of
revenge, it is a spellbinding tour de force of betrayal and
redemption, music and murder, that brings fully to life a bygone
era when sin was cause for celebration and vice was a national
virtue.
