Author Melanie Benjamin will appear at the Palm Springs Public Library on Wednesday, Jan. 30 to discuss her most recent historical novel, “The Girls in the Picture.”
This book is a fictionalized account of the real friendship between silent film actress Mary Pickford and screenwriter Frances Marion. The lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m. in The Learning Center (TLC). A Barnes & Noble representative will be onsite and have books available for purchase.
The Girls in the Picture is a fascinating novel of the friendship and creative partnership between two of Hollywood’s earliest female legends—screenwriter Frances Marion and superstar Mary Pickford. With cameos from such notables as Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Rudolph Valentino, and Lillian Gish, The Girls in the Picture is, at its heart, a story of friendship and forgiveness. Melanie Benjamin perfectly captures the dawn of a glittering new era—its myths and icons, its possibilities and potential, and its seduction and heartbreak.
Benjamin is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling historical novels The Swans of Fifth Avenue, about Truman Capote and his society swans, and The Aviator’s Wife, a novel about Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Previous historical novels include the national bestseller Alice I Have Been, about Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland, and The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, the story of 32-inch-tall Lavinia Warren Stratton, a star during the Gilded Age. Ms. Benjamin’s novels have been translated into over fifteen languages, featured in national magazines such as Good Housekeeping, People, and Entertainment Weekly, and optioned for film.
Melanie Benjamin
Benjamin is a native of the Midwest, having grown up in Indianapolis, Ind., where she pursued her first love, theater. After raising her two sons, Benjamin, a life-long reader (including being the proud winner, two years in a row, of her hometown library’s summer reading program!), decided to pursue a writing career. After writing her own parenting column for a local magazine, and winning a short story contest, Melanie published two contemporary novels under her real name, Melanie Hauser, before turning to historical fiction. Benjamin lives in Chicago with her husband, and near her two grown sons.
With over 100,000 individual items, plus downloadable eBooks, music and eMagazines, the Palm Springs Public Library offers a varied and comprehensive collection to the community.
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