First published 1995
Monroe Stahr, a brilliant film executive, navigates the brutal landscape of 1930s Hollywood. Razor-sharp and haunted by his dead wife's memory, he fights to maintain creative control in a studio system designed to crush individual vision. When he falls for a mysterious woman who reminds him of his lost love, Stahr risks everything—his career, his reputation, his future—to pursue an impossible connection. But the Hollywood machine doesn't surrender its power easily, and every relationship exists under the constant threat of betrayal and commercial calculation.
Genres: drama, literary-fiction, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, biographical-fiction
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: impossible-connection, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New York
Period: 20th-century
169 pages · Paperback · Scribner