Why a Booktrail?
1958 onwards: When you want to find the answers to a long-held question, are you ready for what you find?
Fallen Angels
What you need to know before your trail
An unwanted child,San Francisco, 1958. On a dark December night, a baby girl is left at the Sisters of Charity Orphanage on Telegraph Hill.
A mysterious suicide: one year later, movie star Frances Fitzgerald takes her own life. Her husband, wealthy businessman Maximilian Stanhope, is rumoured to know more about her death than he is letting on, but nothing is ever proved.
A terrible secret: What is the connection between these two events? Frances’s daughter, Cara, is determined to find out. Abandoned by her mother when she is just seven years old, her childhood is filled with hardship and loss. As a young woman she finds professional success as a journalist but,on a personal level, she still struggles to trust those around her. Soon Cara becomes convinced that uncovering the secret behind her mother’s death is the only way to lay her demons to rest, but learning the truth may end up tearing her apart.
Travel Guide
County Cork
This is where the novel starts and where the story of mother and daughter weaves and turns with one twist after another. The valley of Glen Dale is where the tale of poverty and hope begins to shimmer…
London
Franny wants nothing more than to escape to the excitement of London. But when she discovers she is pregnant, her boyfriend abandons her. Undeterred, Franny flees to the city, where she finds work as a nightclub performer. It’s here that her story begins and almost ends…
Hollywood
Most of the novel takes place here with Frances attending parties in grand hotels, posh nightclubs and castles high in the Los Angeles mountains.
It’s in Hollywood where Franny’s career takes off and where the casting coach, so infamous today, plays its part in the sleazy side of the glamourous facade.
So many clubs, hotels and parties, fancy homes and a castle in the hills. However, a gilded cage is still a cage…
Take the castle where Max lives..it’s a huge castle in the hills, a stunning landscape and glorious setting. But a lonely place for some…
Streetview Maps
A) USA - San Francisco - Telegraph Hill
B) USA - Hollywood - Gower Street
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
This book has been on my shelves for some time. Judging the cover as they always tell you not to do, I hesitated about reading it. A bit fluffy, Hollywood romance? Nothing wrong with that but I’d never fancied picking the book up. but something made me do it – and I am VERY pleased I did.
If this novel were a Hollywood hairstyle, it would be an intrically woven plait which looks neat and smooth but look closely as nothing is what it seems. There’s sharp pins sticking out, unwashed bits and is any of it real?
The novel kept surpring me for as one story starts, the pebble of another story starts to role unitl a few chapters later and it’s snowballed. Each section of the book rolled into another with ease, with lots of twists and turns and unexpected dramas. There was a varied cast of characters and the author drew them all so well. I could SEE the castle and the grand house in the hills, see the bending Californian roads…..and smell the irony of the Hollywood facade. That casting coach, in recent times has taken on a much darker tone, but here, in the 1950s, it was pretty dark enough if this novel is anything to go by.
To merge Ireland and Hollywood together, with snippets of London and Morocco is no easy feat, but as the years go by, the story progressed, the characters changed and the story of Frances and her daughter Clara wove around secrets before coming to an ending that wasn’t neat but a complete and poignant surprise!
It’s a bit Kate Morton-esque or Lucinda Riley-esque in parts. Never judge a book by its cover nor a person by their appearance or actions of one day. This was a fascinating journey of a read and I enjoyed the many thrills of this whirlwind of a story.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Fallen Angels
Destination : San Francisco, Hollywood, London, Connemara Author/Guide: Tara Hyland Departure Time: 1946 onwards
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