Description
HOLLYWOOD, 1952
Blessed with the smoldering good looks that destine him for the silver screen, the unfortunately named Dan Root arrives on the scene as a naïve but ambitious 21-year-old. Mentored and exploited by a powerful and dashing Svengali-like producer and his beguiling wife (a movie star whose career is on the tragic cusp between fame and fade out), Dan is transformed into the promising young actor, Dexter Gaines.
Soon their three lives become dangerously entangled by sexual awakening and unrequited love, but when their passion and deceit lead to a crushing discovery and attempted murder, Dexter is forced to choose between stardom and survival. Four decades later, a heartbreaking event compels Dan to return to the city of lost dreams and confront his past. It is only then he begins to unravel the twists and turns of a long-ago emotional mystery, to make peace with his past and his foiled chance at stardom.
Mark B. Perry’s alternating timelines explore the corrosive confluence of fame, fortune, sexuality, and ill-fated romance in this captivating Capote-esque novel.
And Introducing Dexter Gaines: A Novel of Old Hollywood is Mark B. Perry’s debut novel.
“Mark B. Perry is a wonderful writer and I’m sure we will all enjoy his novel And Introducing Dexter Gaines: A Novel of Old Hollywood as well as anything else he puts his mind and talent to. I was very proud of the “Two Doors Down” episode he wrote for my Heartstrings series on Netflix.” —Dolly Parton
“Take me to Mark B. Perry’s Hollywood party! The one that opens his sensational new novel And Introducing Dexter Gaines. In fact, I insist. Do you like a page-turner? You got it, sweetheart. Tell Zanuck I said so.” — Sam Staggs, author of All About All About Eve, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, When Blanche Met Brando, and Born to be Hurt
“Forget the studio backlot tour at MGM. Mark B. Perry’s deft and deliciously immersive And Introducing Dexter Gaines is the only guide you’ll need when it comes to getting inside those fabled walls (plus a few bedrooms, poolside cabanas, and ocean liners) from the Golden Age of 1950s Hollywood. You’ll feel for his main character, stud-to-star wannabe Dexter Gaines, who dares to be himself; you’ll even feel for the studio big-wig who shapes Dexter’s career, who can’t be himself. In Perry’s hands, the research comes alive; he feels what the period must have been like, and his characters come alive too, with hilarity and heartbreak. And Introducing Dexter Gaines is like a wonderful weekend binge on TCM: you don’t want Monday to ever come.” — Kim Powers, author of The History of Swimming and Rules for Being Dead
“If you hate being submerged in a time when movie stars were still idols, when movie palaces were still shrines, and Hollywood still seemed like magic, when supper clubs and transatlantic crossings made the pages of Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell, then And Introducing Dexter Gaines is not for you. Mark Perry recreates all of that with the loving specificity of someone you might assume believes he was born at the wrong time. But in Dexter Gaines, he is up to something much deeper and more complex, much more emotionally wrenching. Set in the waning years of a golden age, this is a novel about the cruelty of the rules by which we live and the lies the movies tell us, about the desire to be somebody and the unbearable need for love. Like the last flickering frames of a movie that has broken your heart, Dexter Gaines will not easily leave you.” —Christopher Keyser, Party of Five (co-creator), The Society, Max’s Julia, and past president of the Writers Guild of America West
“Mark Perry’s poetic way with words and his beautifully drawn characters bring to life the opulent bygone era of 1950s Hollywood in delicious fashion. His main character’s narration through two different eras brings to mind the way Billy Wilder used William Holden’s voice throughout Sunset Boulevard. The back and forth between periods heightens the drama which has as many twists and turns as a fast car careening down Mulholland Drive. Fasten your seatbelts, darlings!” — Laurie Jacobson, Hollywood historian and author of Hollywood Haunted, Dishing Hollywood, and Hollywood Heartbreak
“Fascinating and entirely captivating . . . a page-turner replete with authentic period details, excellent and witty dialogue, and a layered plot worthy of the finest of Hollywood’s golden age.” —Anthony Caplan, author Savior
“Deftly mixing fictional characters with well-known personalities of Hollywood’s golden age, this subtly powerful novel is . . . finely drawn with foibles of the flesh in a Truman Capote–like piece . . . deeply affecting and tinged with pathos.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Displays an excellent sense of plot and pacing as the storyline alternates between the young Dan of 1952 and the aging Dexter of 1994. The historical settings sparkle. . . .” —Foreword Reviews
