The Age of Dreaming

little town in Missouri and resume the quiet life she had fled from. I remember her saying that such a fate seemed worse than death, for once her world had expanded to include so much, the thought of it shrinking again was unbearable. I do not recall what I thought of her feeling at the time, but I certainly don’t share her sentiments now. One thing this last year has taught me is the virtue of companionship, the quiet joy of ordinary pleasures. I grieve for the way my errors of judgment affected Nora and Elizabeth, and of course I regret the fate of Ashley Tyler. I also mourned for years, selfishly, the destruction of my career, all the pictures that I could have made, and didn’t. But it is too late for me to do anything about those past failures except to claim them, accept them as my own. And this I have done and must do in order to accept the recent blessings that life has unexpectedly provided me. For I have come onto something—not totally divorced from my past, but with a life and a value all its own. And I would not trade what I have today, the afternoons with my son, for any measure of fame or success.

It is now a full month into the baseball season, and next week we’re taking Charlie to a game. Dodger Stadium sits high on a hill just off the Pasadena Freeway, and on Saturday afternoon we will pick him up and take him there. I am told that the view of the mountains from inside the stadium is lovely, particularly when they’re lit orange and red at sunset. I am told that the Dodgers’ former star and one of Charlie’s heroes, Jackie Robinson, grew up in Pasadena, and perhaps after the game we will try to find his house. The weekend after that we will go to Santa Monica, where a Ferris wheel and several other rides have opened on the pier. Soon after that we will go to the zoo, which has just received two new lions. There appear to be an infinite number of activities in Los Angeles, things I never thought to do until recently. But my son is interested in everything, and wants to go everywhere, and Mrs. Bradford is always happy to join us. She has her own suggestions for places we might visit, and she and Charlie talk excitedly about where they want to go next. My plan is simply to take them wherever they wish. I am sure that they will keep me quite busy.

Author’s Note

I would like to thank the following people for their help with this book: Jennifer Gilmore and Kyoko Uchida, my indispensable readers. Richard Parks, for his patience and belief. Johnny Temple, for being the most committed and conscientious publisher any writer could ever hope for. Johanna Ingalls, for her tireless work and unflagging sense of humor.

I am indebted to several written works and their authors, particularly Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars; Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By … and Behind the Mask of Innocence—Sex, Violence, Prejudice, Crime: Films of Social Conscience in the Silent Era; Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion; Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way; Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, A Cast of Killers; John Modell, The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation: The Japanese of Los Angeles 1900–1942; and Tony Villecco, Silent Stars Speak: Interviews with Twelve Cinema Pioneers. I am also grateful to Daisuke Miyao for his brilliant work on Hayakawa, which helped me understand the kinds of roles my own fictional actors would have been able to play. In addition, I learned a great deal from movie magazines of the silent film era, particularly Photoplay and Motion Picture Classic.

There are a few intentional adjustments in the dates, names, or histories of particular real places, variations from fact that I kept in service to my story. Scenes occur at the Pasadena Playhouse or Runyan Canyon Park, for example, when those places did not actually open until several years after the events of the novel. But by the time I learned the true dates, those settings were so integral to the story and so entrenched in my imagination that I could not bear to find alternative locations.

I am grateful to Jason Reed, who let me stay in his cabin and introduced me to my favorite place on earth. Thanks also to Stephanie Vaughn and everyone else at Cornell, who afforded me the quiet and space—again—I needed to complete this book; and to my friends and colleagues at Children’s Institute, who gave me flexibility, understanding, and time.

Finally, my love and gratitude to Patsy Cox—for all the things I’ve already thanked her for, and the many more I haven’t.

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Chapter One

Gwen

The picture opened on Gwen’s computer, revealing a lake framed by pine trees, a backdrop of snow-covered peaks. A small stream flowed from the lake and when she looked very close, Gwen could almost see the water moving, the clouds drifting over the mountains. She imagined herself in the scene—the warm sun on her skin, the smell of pine—and felt her breathing slow, her shoulders ease. Just for a moment she forgot where she was—in a dingy building on 103rd Street in Watts.

Tracy’s e-mail had come with the subject line, Cloud Lakes Trip: Last-Minute Details! Although Gwen was about to step out of the office, she couldn’t resist checking the message. Besides the photo, there was a bullet-point list of food and supplies, plus directions to Tracy’s house. Gwen glanced at