First published 2025
Isabella Giori has spent ten months under a seven-year studio contract when she auditions for Alfred Hitchcock in 1957. Weeks later, the studio's fixer hides her away in a small Carmel cottage while she waits in dread. Her neighbor Léon Chazan works on screenplays he cannot sell because Hollywood has blacklisted him. When Iz disrupts his writing, an unlikely friendship forms between the hopeful actress and the frustrated screenwriter. Soon they escape together in his roadster, racing down the fog-covered Big Sur coastline. Sixty years later, twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan arrives in Carmel to sell the cottage her grandfather left behind. She discovers a hidden safe containing secrets that make her question everything she knew about the man known as Chazan. The revelations force Gemma to wonder if she can measure up to his legacy. Clayton weaves together two women across generations, exploring the struggles of writers, the dreams of performers, and the courage required to create art in impossible circumstances.
Genres: fiction, romance, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family, intergenerational
Setting: Big Sur, Carmel, Hollywood
Period: 1957, 2017
318 pages · Kindle Edition · Harper