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by Kate Benson (Author)
Those who live in the isolated port town of Two Harbors, Minnesota, still remember the strange downfall of Lila Maywood--a striking beauty who abandoned her family for Hollywood with dreams of becoming a movie star. Lila's disappearance has defined the life of her daughter, Casey, left with only an autographed, heart-shaped headshot of her mother. When a big-city stranger shows up in town, Casey reluctantly falls for him, only to have him desert her, too. This new abandonment brings Casey face-to-face with the legacy of her mother's past, and the possibility that her own future could follow the same course. Against her father's counsel, Casey journeys from Two Harbors to Hollywood, where she discovers a world of secret lives and shifting roles that holds revealing truths about those who left her behind.
Cinematic and suspenseful, this is the electrifying story of a daughter learning the one act her mother never mastered: letting go.Back Jacket
Wholly original. Kate Benson is a storyteller, someone who knows how to hold the reader in suspense. --Judith Guest, author of Ordinary People
"This is the deepest, purest first novel of the year." --Edmund White
For the last nine years, Casey Maywood's life has been defined by the disappearance of her mother, a striking beauty who abandoned her family for Hollywood and the dream of becoming a star. One summer night at her small-town movie theatre, Casey meets Dex Stone, a charismatic outsider who makes her feel so free of the legacy of her mother's past that she inevitably falls for him, only to have him desert her too. In the days following Dex's departure, Casey discovers more about him that leads her to Hollywood and a world of shifting roles and secret lives that holds revealing truths about those who left her behind.
"A richly evocative, beautifully imagined, and warmly engaging novel about the mysterious spells individuals cast over one another, most potently the spell of an elusive mother. Kate Benson is a natural storyteller." --Joyce Carol Oates
Kate Benson's fiction has appeared in the Hawaii Review, the Allegheny Review, and USA Weekend. This is her first novel. She lives in Boston.
