Woman Enters Left

A woman sets out on a cross-country road trip, unknowingly tracing in reverse the path her mother traveled thirty years before. “Tender, touching, original, and rich with delicious period detail of Hollywood’s heyday--buckle up, because you’ll definitely want to go on a road trip after reading this delightful book!”--Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home In the 1950s, movie star Louise Wilde is caught between an unfulfilling acting career and a shaky marriage when she receives an out-of-the-blue phone call: She has inherited the estate of Florence “Florrie” Daniels, a Hollywood screenwriter she barely recalls meeting. Among Florrie’s possessions are several unproduced screenplays, personal journals, and--inexplicably--old photographs of Louise’s mother, Ethel. On an impulse, Louise leaves a film shoot in Las Vegas and sets off for her father’s house on the East Coast, hoping for answers about the curious inheritance and, perhaps, about her own troubled marriage. Nearly thirty years earlier, Florrie takes off on an adventure of her own, driving her Model T westward from New Jersey in pursuit of broader horizons. She has the promise of a Hollywood job and, in the passenger seat, Ethel, her best friend since childhood. Florrie will do anything for Ethel, who is desperate to reach Nevada in time to reconcile with her husband and reunite with her daughter. Ethel fears the loss of her marriage; Florrie, with long-held secrets confided only in her journal, fears its survival. In parallel tales, the three women--Louise, Florrie, Ethel--discover that not all journeys follow a map. As they rediscover their carefree selves on the road, they learn that sometimes the paths we follow are shaped more by our traveling companions than by our destinations.

Advance praise for Woman Enters Left
 
“Tender, touching, original, and rich with delicious period detail of Hollywood’s heyday—buckle up, because you’ll definitely want to go on a road trip after reading this delightful book!”—Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home

Autorentext

Jessica Brockmole is the author of At the Edge of Summer, the internationally bestselling Letters from Skye, which was named one of the best books of 2013 by Publishers Weekly, and Something Worth Landing For, a novella featured in Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War. She lives in northern Indiana with her husband, two children, and far too many books.

Leseprobe
Chapter One

1952

Movies always begin with a panorama.

A skyline. A beach. A cactus-­dotted desert. Paris, Rome, Honolulu, New York City.

This one opens in Los Angeles.

It’s 1952, and the city doesn’t have much of a skyline. Low buildings squat in front of the Santa Monica Mountains. A few are recognizable. The uninspired bulk of the United Artists Theater. The turquoise-­stuccoed Eastern Columbia Building. The highest, the gold-­spired City Hall, silhouetted almost alone against the dark mountains.

We zoom in. If not for that opening panorama, it could be any city in mid-December. The cafés, the hotels, the cinemas, the self-­important office buildings. The shop windows decorated with tinsel and artificial snow. It could be New York or Chicago. It could be a studio’s back-lot set. Beautiful and busy people hurry down the streets. They hail taxis, they step from streetcars, they push in and out of buildings. They balance shopping bags and gift boxes. They drop pocket change in red Salvation Army kettles. Everyone has a purpose, guided by an inner stage direction. Businessmen with trilby hats and folded newspapers. Young women with lipstick and slim dresses. Older women with handbags dangling from the crook of their arm. It could almost be stock footage of Christmas in the city.

But then we see palm trees and sunshine between the garlands and strings of lights. We see lighted signs outside the theaters—­the Pantages, the Paramount, the distinctive Egyptian and Chinese. We see the Knickerbocker Hotel and the Garden of Allah, the towered Crossroads of the World, the nine giant white letters so stark against the distant hillside and we know: This isn’t stock footage. This is Hollywood.

A woman enters left.

Already we know she must be our leading lady. She stands out among the generic businessmen and lipsticked women. She doesn’t swing her hips or smile at the passing men. She doesn’t check her reflection in shopwindows. She’s not pretty, if we’re being honest. Striking, maybe. She doesn’t have the lushness of a Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth or the fresh-­faced prettiness of a Doris Day. But, eyes forward, shoulders back, she walks with a certainty that is infinitely more attractive.

She’s dressed neatly, in a crisp white blouse and navy suit. The skirt isn’t too short or too long. The jacket is feminine without being fussy. Beneath the turned-­up collar of the jacket, she wears a thin scarf the color of daffodils, smoothed down and tied in a square knot. It suggests a man’s necktie. She might have intended that.

Perhaps she’s a businesswoman, straight from a meeting. Perhaps a saleswoman, fresh from landing a big contract. She carries a soft brown briefcase, creased in the corners with use. Even without knowing what she does, we know she’s a woman used to navigating her way through a man’s world.

Her stride is deliberate, forceful, confident—­that is, until she approaches an intersection. Here she pauses and looks in each of the four directions. She closes her eyes beneath a streetlamp topped with a decorative metal Christmas tree briefly, as if comparing these two crossed streets against a mental map. With a nod of satisfaction, she continues on her journey.

Eventually she turns off the main street. The sidewalks are less crowded here. All white stucco and red tile, it’s a residential area. This isn’t a neighborhood of mansions, of movie stars and cigar-­wielding producers. It’s not marked on any “Homes of the Stars” maps. Its streets are lined with quiet apartments and modest hotels.

After a few blocks, she stops in front of a building painted a brilliant blue and tucked away behind a shady green courtyard. It’s an apartment building, unofficially called the “Blaue Engel,” though Dietrich never lived there. Construction finished the day the movie came out. It’s not as fashionable an address as the El Greco or Hollywood Tower, but its apartments never sit empty for long.

Setting her briefcase on the sidewalk in front of the Blaue Engel, she opens her wide leather handbag and conducts a search. A man with a shopping bag edges around her, as does a woman with a small, furiously yipping dog. The man stares back over his shoulder but, engrossed with the contents of her purse, she doesn’t notice. She finally extracts a lace-­bordered handkerchief and dabs at her forehead. It’s not especially warm out. Perhaps she’s dabbing away a headache or a bad day. She refolds the damp handkerchief and glances at a little gold wristwatch. It’s a Longines, slim and coppery. The way she turns her wrist and shakes away her sleeve in a practiced movement, it’s clear she’s a woman with a schedule. Right now she frowns down at the watch. Dropping the handkerchief back into her bag and retrieving the worn briefcase, she heads for the arched courtyard doorway.

The courtyard is leafy and dripping with bougainvillea. It’s a bright, wild backdrop for this woman, in her serious suit and neck scarf. A man in a rumpled black jacket looks up from a…