From the Publisher
"How wonderful that the Los Angeles Review of Books has resurrected this forgotten classic set in 1920s L.A. that rings with timeless truth about Hollywood's twisted allure but also waxes lyrical about the rolling hills and canyons that Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and Tarzana, once called home. The naïve starlets, dodgy directors, morphine addicts, cowboys, rum-runners, aspiring writers, and gentleman ranchers of a century past are vivid, flawed characters, and the precise, poetic descriptions of open land now ravaged by development and forest fires will make you weep. This is a melodramatic page-turner that by turns enthralls and shocks while presenting a keyhole into a vanished era with haunting resonance to our own. Drop everything and buy "The Girl From Hollywood." This is an imprint to watch, and as a student of L.A. history, I can't wait to see what LARB publishes next." —Denise Hamilton, former LA Times reporter, crime novelist, and editor of the award-winning Los Angeles Noir I and Los Angeles Noir 2; The Classics short story anthologies
"This Hollywood story of 1924 by the creator of Tarzan reflects the tensions between the agrarian dream of California — utopian life on the bountiful land — and the tawdry modernity of the Jazz Age represented by Los Angeles: a cesspit of rapacious directors, the sex trade, drug addiction, alcoholism, and crime. Most interesting is the novel’s moral conundrum — in a utopia, what outlet is there for youth’s restlessness and ambition, besides out and, most likely, down?" —Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and The Revolution of Marina M.
