Juliette Fay —“one of the best authors of women’s fiction” (Library Journal) — transports us back to the early days of Hollywood as three friends struggle to earn their places among the stars of the silent screen.

It’s July 1921, “flickers” are all the rage, and Irene Van Beck has just jumped off a moving train to escape her brutal fate in a traveling burlesque show. When fellow dancer Millie Martin and comedian Henry Weiss leap after her, the three find their way to the bright lights of Hollywood with hopes of making it big in the burgeoning silent film industry.

At first glance, 1920s Hollywood is like no other place on earth—iridescent, scandalous, and utterly exhilarating. But success doesn’t come easy, and nothing can prepare them for the poverty, temptation, and heartbreak that lie ahead. With their ambitions challenged by the men above them and the prejudice surrounding them, their friendship is the only constant through desperate times. What begins as a quest for fame and fortune soon becomes a search for love, acceptance, and fulfillment as they navigate the back lots and stage sets where the illusions of the silver screen are brought to life.
With her “trademark wit and grace” (Randy Susan Meyers, author of The Widow of Wall Street), Juliette Fay crafts another radiant and fascinating historical novel as thrilling as the bygone era of Hollywood itself.

“Fay paints a vivid picture of newborn Hollywood in this big-hearted tale of three appealing misfits striving to achieve their dreams.”
—Therese Anne Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Behaved Woman and Z