Lyle Laney

The year is 1962. Helen Price has grown wealthy in the high-stakes world of Thoroughbred racing. From her ranch in the California countryside, she lives a quiet life overseeing her business empire.

But Helen hasn’t always lived this way. When she was much younger, in San Francisco in 1921, she was a silver-screen starlet in a silent film operating in the shadowy margins at the Opal Theater.

It was a time of blinding fame and stardom. A young woman’s first incandescent lover. There was also excess, hedonism, and danger.

Now, a man whom Helen has never met, Paul Vickers, has called her, asking to discuss that distant time. Could secrets Helen believes long dead and buried resurface and threaten everything she has achieved?

A game of cat and mouse unfolds as Helen’s story plays out in two timelines. The first follows a precocious 18-year-old, full of discovery but too naive to see the threats hiding dangerously close. The second follows a cautious 59-year-old who has been taught harsh lessons about when to trust, and more importantly, whom to trust with her heart.