Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing, and enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw. But life on the dark side carries a heavy price, and one fate seems most likely for men like Joe: an early death. 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 that brings fully to life a bygone era when sin was cause for celebration and vice was a national virtue.