What if Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was a true story?

When you read Chris Bohjalian's The Double Bind, you have to go on the assumption that events from F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel The Great Gatsby really happened. The story opens with college student Laurel Estabrook biking through the woods and she is brutally attacked. The details are fuzzy and revealed from her perspective, but she is adamant that she was not raped. The psychological impact of this attack is well-known to Laurel's friends and associates.

In the present, Laurel is a social worker. She learns that one of her clients, a homeless man named Bobby Crocker has died and she goes to collect his meager belongings from the place where he had been staying. She finds this box that he always carried around. Inside are hundreds of photographs from the 1960's and early 1970's which makes her wonder about Bobby's life before everything went downhill. He was obviously a talented photographer and some of his photos were of very famous people. One photograph in particular catches Laurel's eye. It is of herself on a bicycle seemingly just before her attack. She discovers other photos of places from her childhood home in West Egg. Pictures of the Gatsby and Buchannan estates. Some pictures are of Daisy Buchannan, her daughter Pamela and a young boy. Laurel is convinced that Bobby Crocker is that young boy. The child born after Gatsby was murdered and Tom and Daisy reconciled. She even speculates that he might have been the result of Daisy's affair with Gatsby.

Laurel becomes obsessed with learning Bobby's story to the dismay of everyone around her. She returns to West Egg and talks to people who might have remembered the Buchannan's youngest child, but few have any details to offer. She even interviews Pamela, now an elderly woman who sadly recounts her brother's problems, but assures Laurel that this Bobby Crocker was not her brother and she doesn't know why he had those photographs of her family. As Laurel's search for the truth becomes self-destructive, we realize that she is not so much searching for Bobby Crocker's truth, but rather her own.

I saw this book reviewed in print and saw an interview with Chris Bohjalian on The Today Show. Something about it piqued my interest. It isn't often that you come across a book that you just have to have right now. I couldn't wait for a reserve at the library so I bought it. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books and hearing the author talk about the true-life inspiration for this book made it even more compelling. There was a homeless man who died leaving a box of amazing photographs hinting at a richer life than his end would make one believe. It ties into what Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby says. "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." The amazing black and white photography of Bob "Soupy" Campbell is featured throughout the book.