Dreams Bigger Than the Night

Set during the Great Depression, when fascism was looking increasingly attractive to many, Paul M. Levitt’s latest novel surrounds attempts to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the counterforces at work: the American Nazi Party, Avery Brundage, a German assassin, and those American athletes—eighteen of whom were the first black athletes hoping to compete—wishing to show the world their superb talents. When a young woman in the employ of Abner “Longie” Zwillman, the Don of New Jersey, goes missing, Jay Klug and his friend T-Bone Searle try to find her before she falls victim to a brutal Nazi killer. Their journey leads them to the man who reputedly killed the famous gangster Arnold Rothstein (the Big Bankroll), to Jean Harlow, Dreamland, Cape May, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Amarillo, and even Los Angeles.