This article illustrates how literature can bring models to life in undergraduate courses on labor market economics. The authors argue that economics instructors and students can benefit from even small doses of literature. The authors examine excerpts from five American novels: "Sister Carrie" by Theodore Drieser (1900/2005); "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck (1939/1967); "McTeague: A Story of San Francisco" by Frank Norris (1899/2006); "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville (1852/2003); and "Seraph on the Suwanee" by Zora Neale Hurston (1948). Examples from these works cover five labor market themes: (1) reservation wages and the supply of labor, (2) surplus labor and low wages, (3) demand for labor and marginal productivity, (4) the economic model of discrimination, and (5) search versus random matching in labor markets (a critique of neoclassical labor theory). (Contains 3 notes.)