A GOLDEN LIFE ~ GINNY KUBITZ MOYER ~ REVIEW

(Book for review courtesy of NetGalley)

Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity, for She Writes Press ~ Sep 24  

In Jenny Kubitz Moyer's novel A Golden Life, Frances Healy wants a fresh start and finds it in a secretarial job with the studio head, Lawrence Merrill. When the studio wants to make a film about a Gold Rush era child performer turn serious stage actress, Frances and her boss are surprised Kitty Ridley is still alive and reluctant to have her life played out on screen. (Kitty is based on Lotta Crabtree, a real child performer during the Gold Rush.) Frances, Lawrence, and his daughter Sally travel to Napa to try and persuade Kitty to let the film be made. Frances visits her hometown of San Francisco and reckons with the past she was desperate to escape, and Lawrence realizes he needs to face up to his wife's death and be a better parent to Sally. Kitty tells her truth, not the story presented in the hack biography. 

The novel is based around the idea that you can't change or deny the past ; your past is what defines you and helps spur you to change for the better. The characters are likable and the story is believable and relatable. Golden Age Hollywood novels with a dual historical perspective are usually set in a modern era with the golden age as the past. This novel uses the golden age as the present setting, with Kitty's Gold Rush days and pre Hollywood stage time as the past. We often forget there was entertainment before film. A Golden Life is a meditative novel about who we are, and who we can become.