Cry Wilderness

Cry Wilderness

by Frank Capra
Cry Wilderness

Cry Wilderness

by Frank Capra

eBook

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Overview

The never-before-published 1966 novel by legendary film director Frank Capra finally in print for the first time

"If you, too, feel like wandering, come along and help me unravel this odd tale—a tale full of half-truths, whole-truths, and no-truths at all."

So begins Frank Capra's never published, and often speculated about novel of his favorite place—Silver Lake, nestled in the jagged cliffs of the eastern Sierra Nevadas. Capra casts the fictional Frank Capra in the lead roll of this novel of environmental and humanitarian preservation.

As tourism comes back to the decimated boom towns of the eastern Sierras, Frank Capra finds himself, along with a do-good cop named Lefty, at the center of a scandal. That scandal being that they provided food and protection to two men living off the grid in the wilderness, while the powers that be have been desperately trying to clear the men out of the area, being not the kind of folk they want in their towns.

In a story that only Frank Capra can tell, the David and Goliath of small-town tourism politics comes to a head in the wilderness of the Sierra Nevadas. Cry Wilderness is a deeply humane novel about the ways in which people caring for one another ultimately triumphs over oppression.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781644280171
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Publication date: 10/16/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 272
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Frank Capra was born in 1897 in Bisaquino, Sicily. In 1903 his family left for America to join his brother, who was already in the US. Benjamin lived in Los Angeles so Frank and his family left Ellis Island and headed for the west coast. He went to Caltech, then called Throop College, and graduated in 1918. After a short lived stint in the Army, Frank went to work as a movie extra, where he realized that he loved the movies.

In 1927 Capra was hired by Harry Cohn to direct movies for Columbia Pictures. He married his second wife, Lucille Warner Reyburn, in 1929, she was the love of his life and they had four children and spent the rest of their lives together.

He directed a series of successful movies and discovered talent like Barbara Stanwyck, who he directed in Ladies of Leisure, Meet John Doe, and Bitter Tea of General Yen. In 1931, he was assigned to direct Platinum Blonde with Jean Harlow. On that set he met Robert Riskin, who helped him polish the screenplay. Their collaboration was one for the ages and from it came It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, You Can't Take It With You, and It's a Wonderful Life among others.

Frank Capra won six academy award, was president of the Motion Picture Arts Academy, and the Directors Guild of America. He won countless awards from around the world and met kings, presidents, and even the Pope. He was one of the greatest film directors of all time.

After his film career, he took to writing books, lectures, and essays, many of which have not been published. His autobiography The Name Above The Title was a bestseller when it was released in 1971.

Capra died in California in 1991. His films and stories live on.

Read an Excerpt

The city that had bought up and stolen Mono's water so that it could grow and prosper, now brought prosperity and lasting abundance back to the Mono area it had once impoverished. Smog-ridden Southern Californians seeking clean air and quiet solitude, found their vacation-paradise in the land whose waters they had "appropriated." Fishermen, campers, hunters, skiers, artists, rock hounds, photographers, and lovers of mountain and desert turned Mono County into a year-round vacation land.

Mono boomed again. The new gold rush was on. Millions were being spent for ski lifts, motels, trailer parks, restaurants. Fix the roads. Tear down unsightly shanties. Get rid of crochety old-timers and dirty old "characters." Spruce up; prepare the way for the great king, the VACATION DOLLAR!

And, of course, getting rid of the two unsavory hermits like Bear Bait and Dry Rot was part of the big clean-up. And Lefty burned with indignation. Deep down in his gross, material soul he loved these two derelicts. He didn't know who they were, why they holed up in the woods, what sins they were expiating, or what ideals they were trying to recapture, but he would fight for them. His weapons were hopelessly inadequate, almost ludicrous: righteous indignation and subordination.

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