And Introducing Dexter Gaines
A Novel of Old Hollywood
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Published by: Amble Press
Release Date: May 6, 2025
Pages: 370
ISBN13: 978-1612943138
Synopsis
Emmy, Golden Globe, and GLAAD Award-winning writer Mark B. Perry deftly weaves fictional characters with well-known personalities of Hollywood’s golden age into this powerful novel about broken dreams and mended hearts.
HOLLYWOOD, 1952: Blessed with the smoldering good looks that destine him for the silver screen, the unfortunately named Dan Root arrives as a naïve but ambitious 21-year-old, fleeing a troubled past and determined to take his place in the motion picture galaxy. Mentored and exploited by a powerful Svengali-like producer and his beguiling wife (a movie star whose career is on the tragic cusp between fame and fade out), Dan is transformed into the promising young actor, Dexter Gaines.
Soon their three lives become dangerously entangled by sexual awakening and unrequited love, but when their passion and deceit lead to a crushing discovery and attempted murder, Dexter is forced to choose between stardom and survival. Four decades later, a heartbreaking event compels Dan to return to the city of broken dreams and confront his past. It is only then he begins to unravel a long-ago emotional mystery and make peace with his past and his foiled chance at stardom.
Mark B. Perry's alternating timelines explore the corrosive confluence of fame, sexuality, and ill-fated romance in this captivating Capote-esque novel.
Add on GoodreadsPraise
“Mark is a wonderful writer and I’m sure we will all enjoy his novel And Introducing Dexter Gaines...as well as anything else he puts his mind and talent to. I was very proud of the "Two Doors Down" episode he wrote for my Heartstrings series on Netflix.”
– Dolly Parton
“Take me to Mark Perry’s Hollywood party! The one that opens his sensational new novel, And Introducing Dexter Gaines. In fact, I insist. You like a page turner? You got it, sweetheart. Tell Zanuck I said so.”
– Sam Staggs, author of All About All About Eve: The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made, Close-up on “Sunset Boulevard,” Finding Zsa Zsa, and The Return of Marilyn Monroe
“Forget the studio backlot tour at MGM. Mark Perry’s deft and deliciously immersive And Introducing Dexter Gaines is the only guide you’ll need when it comes to getting inside those fabled walls (plus a few bedrooms, poolside cabanas, and ocean liners) from the Golden Age of 1950s Hollywood. You’ll feel for his main character, stud-to-star wannabe Dexter Gaines, who dares to be himself; you’ll even feel for the studio big-wig who shapes Dexter’s career, who can’t be himself. In Perry’s hands, the research comes alive; he feels what the period must have been like, and his characters come alive too, with hilarity and heartbreak. And Introducing Dexter Gaines is like a wonderful weekend binge on TCM: you don’t want Monday to ever come.”
– Kim Powers, Author of The History of Swimming and Rules for Being Dead
"Mark B. Perry’s odyssey through the glamour and danger of Old Hollywood draws you in from the first page to the last. And Introducing Dexter Gaines is a mesmerizing journey through a world where the air is thick with cigarette smoke, sex, and betrayal. Perry’s prose expertly conjures the haunting allure of old Hollywood, where love and ambition intertwine. Sun- drenched romance bleeds into booze-soaked revenge in this pitch-perfect debut novel."
– Luke Yankee, Author, Just Outside The Spotlight: Growing Up with Eileen Heckart
“If you hate being submerged in a time when movie stars were still idols, when movie palaces were still shrines, and Hollywood still seemed like magic, when supper clubs and transatlantic crossings made the pages of Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell, then And Introducing Dexter Gaines is not for you. Mark Perry recreates all of that with the loving specificity of someone you might assume believes he was born at the wrong time. But in Dexter Gaines he is up to something much deeper and more complex, much more emotionally wrenching. Set in the waning years of a golden age, this is a novel about the cruelty of the rules by which we live, and the lies the movies tell us, about the desire to be somebody and the unbearable need for love. Like the last flickering frames of a movie that has broken your heart, Dexter Gaines will not easily leave you.”
– Christopher Keyser, Party of Five (co-creator), The Society, (HBO) Max’s Julia, and past president of the Writers Guild of America West
“Mark Perry's poetic way with words and his beautifully drawn characters bring to life the opulent bygone era of 1950s Hollywood in delicious fashion. His main character's narration through two different eras brings to mind the way Billy Wilder used William Holden's voice throughout Sunset Boulevard. The back and forth between time periods heightens the drama which has as many twists and turns as a fast car careening down Mulholland Drive. Fasten your seatbelts, darlings!”
– Laurie Jacobson, Hollywood historian and author of Hollywood Haunted, Dishing Hollywood, and Hollywood Heartbreak
Excerpt
Soundtrack
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