Product Description Eddie Brennan at twenty-seven has survived alcoholism and prison. Sober a few years, learning a trade, off parole, his recovery seems secure. But he is restless, agitated. He has talents he needs to test, dreams to chase. Are they realistic or idle fantasies How can he know? Risk failure or accept the monotony of pedestrian averageness? The Bicentennial Independence Day weekend and an encounter with a precocious 17-year-old girl, a product of wealth and comfort, launch him onto a radical trajectory. The aftermath of this weekend has Eddie, his old Chevy loaded, leaving the Philadelphia suburb of Willow Brook for Los Angeles, "...the place where they make the movies." If his unexpected immersion in Hollywood life is an antidote to the quotidian routine he has fled, it might be a questionable alternative. However, although wiser and chastened, he knows one thing to be certain - he can't go back. About the Author Why do writers write? Anne Rice thinks we're searching for "our true brothers and sisters." Good as any answer, I guess. I'd say, "why do anything else?" So why did I do anything else? Mostly because, from age 15, I always needed a paycheck. If that meant lying about my age to work in machine shops or drive dump trucks I did it. But nothing delivered the pleasure of a well-constructed, well-received paragraph, a rhyme that worked and wasn't wrenched. When some Catholic School nun read my work to a class that didn't "get it", that moment of smug superiority lasted. The B-1 Bomber or space shuttle part that the inspectors "bought"? Forget it. I did. Admittedly, the time came when I saw my real work, the writing, as an aberration and destroyed a few thousand pages of unretrievable manuscript. And soon I was at it again.