432 pages | PaperbackNEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolinis Italy to 1940s Los Angelesa timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winningauthor ofA Constellation of Vital Phenomena

A great literary read.Ann Patchett, author ofThe Dutch House

Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Mariaimmigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her fathers arrest.

Fifteen years later, on the eve of Americas entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother wont speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, cant escape the studios narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Marias only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.

Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European migrs: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled.While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her fathers past threatens Marias carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her fathers fateand her own.

Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility,Mercury Pictures Presentsspans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to lifes bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose workThe Washington Postcalls a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.