The Biograph Girl

The highly-acclaimed William J. Mann, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, takes us on a wild roller-coaster ride through the 20th century, led by a sassy, chain-smoking 107-year-old actress named Florence Lawrence. Masterfully blending fact with fiction, Mann has reimagined this very real historical figure. From her vaudeville childhood as "Baby Flo, The Child Wonder Whistler" to the snowy Bronx backlot where she shot her first motion picture, the lovely Florence Lawrence commanded -- and demanded -- attention. By 1910, she was the legendary, enigmatic Biograph Girl -- the world's very first movie star.

Sixty years later, the fiercely competitive Sheehan twins discover a feisty, mysterious old lady named Flo Bridgewood...a woman who turns out to be none other than the renowned Biograph Girl -- who supposedly died decades before. In this sweeping, sensational novel. Mann has imagined that the movies' first star didn't die. that Florence Lawrence faked her suicide and went on to a whole new life. When the Sheehan brothers find her, she's relaunched into a new and unorthodox stardom, popping up everywhere from the six o'clock news to "The Rosie O'Donnell Show." But Flo, who delights in telling people she's "the one who started all this," soon discovers the times -- and nature of celebrity -- have changed dramatically from the beginning of the century to the end.

Like Christopher Bram's Father of Frankenstein and Alan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, "The Biograph Girl" is a tour de force that seamlessly weaves historical reality with dazzling invention. With a supporting cast of characters that includeD.W.Griffith. Clark Gable, Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, John Waters, and Oprah Winfrey, "The Biograph Girl" is truly a chronicle of the 20th century -- a sweeping epic packed with history, wisdom, humor, passion, and the golden age of movies.