by Kim Zimmer
First published 2011
Kim Zimmer opens up about her decades playing Reva Shayne on Guiding Light. The actress takes readers through her transformation into television's most unpredictable character. Zimmer played a scheming temptress, a woman battling mental illness, an Amish community member, and a person displaced through time. She embodied a Southern belle during wartime, hosted her own talk program, and faced a cancer diagnosis. The memoir reveals how Zimmer balanced these dramatic storylines with her real life as a mother and spouse. She shares unfiltered stories from the set of television's longest running drama. Zimmer describes the challenges of sustaining a character across multiple decades and storylines. The book includes photographs documenting her career and personal moments. Zimmer writes with complete honesty about the soap opera industry and her experiences within it. Her memoir captures both the absurdity and genuine emotion of daytime television while exploring how her fictional and real identities intertwined over the years.
Genres: drama, autobiography, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Guiding Light
Period: multiple-decades
320 pages · Hardcover · NAL
Content warnings: mental-illness