Gene Pantalone invites you to traverse the glittering yet shadowed pathways of history. His narratives, infused with the echoes of timeless dreams, promise a journey profound and exhilarating, where real-life Freddie Welsh and fictional Jay Gatsby—two lives seemingly disparate—find themselves enmeshed in shared experiences and curious parallels, a testament to the strange symmetry of fate in the glittering tumult of the Roaring Twenties. Amidst the luminous constellation of fictional figures that adorned F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, there emerged a singular character whose name remained unchanged from that of a living, breathing soul—Myrtle Wilson, a woman involved in a car crash with Freddie Welsh. Was this a mere lapse of imagination on the part of the author, or a deliberate homage to the muse who kindled the flame of The Great Gatsby? One can only conjecture as to the true motives behind Fitzgerald’s choice. Much like Gatsby himself, Freddie Welsh embodied a poignant hopefulness amidst the encircling shadows of adversity; he discovered that wealth could not purchase true companionship, and that the past is an unrelenting specter. A solitary dream illuminated his existence—a dream he grasped with unwavering tenacity, far beyond the point of disillusionment. If you enjoy a gripping tale of the rise and fall of a legendary character, the sort captured in the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald and far to common in the world of boxing, you will thoroughly appreciate Gene Pantalone's saga of Freddie Welsh and the Roaring Twenties. Not only was Welsh a great champion, he just may have been the inspiration of Fitzgerald's most iconic creation. Who knows? But he makes his case, and certainly it's a story of which dreams and novels are made. --Randy Roberts, professor of history, Purdue University, and co-author, A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle Pantalone has a flair for bringing life to his written words. Meaning when I read what he put down, I have the feeling of going back in time. I learned a lot from reading this book and I enjoyed it very much, in fact I LOVED IT! ---Henry Hascup, President New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame Gene Pantalone's new book, Chasing The Great Gatsby: Freddie Welsh's Saga , is the most unusual boxing book I've ever read. Did F. Scott Fitzgerald base Jay Gatsby on the lightweight champion? ---Nigel Collins, ESPN Boxing analyst and columnist, International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee, and former editor-in-chief of The Ring magazine Chasing The Great Gatsby is styled as a biography of Welsh and also an advocacy brief in support of the proposition that Welsh was the inspiration and model for the title character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal novel The Great Gatsby ...there are some interesting observations and nuggets of information to be mined in Chasing The Great Gatsby . ---Thomas Hauser, author of Missing that served as the basis for the Academy-Award-winning film starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. Like Gene Pantalone's well-received biography of Lew Jenkins, this book is vigorouly researched. Here, however, Pantalone allows his imagination carry the story of boxer Freddie Welsh to some unexpected places. In exploring the possibility that Welsh served as F. Scott Fitzgerald's model for Jay Gatsby, he avoids the pitfalls of the "Elvis is alive" school of writing and lets the reader make up his or her own mind, or explore other possibilities. It's a great yarn and a fresh look at the time, place, and people that inspired Fitzgerald's classic. I may not look at Jay Gatsby the same way again. ---Clay Coppedge, author of Forgotten Tales of Texas and other books.