“A stunning, utterly captivating read. Another Side of Paradise delivers an unforgettable portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham, a remarkable couple steeped in all the glamour, romance, and intrigue of old Hollywood. Their wild ride of a love affair is one for the ages!” — Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House and Glory Over Everything
A novel based on the true story of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his longtime mistress, Sheilah Graham—an unforgettable tale of love, celebrity, and Gatsby-esque self-creation in 1930s Hollywood.
In 1937 Hollywood, gossip columnist Sheilah Graham’s star is on the rise, while literary wonder boy F. Scott Fitzgerald’s career is slowly drowning in booze. But the once-famous author, desperate to make money penning scripts for the silver screen, is charismatic enough to attract the gorgeous Miss Graham, a woman who exposes the secrets of others while carefully guarding her own. Like Fitzgerald’s hero Jay Gatsby, Graham has meticulously constructed a life far removed from the poverty of her childhood in London’s slums. And like Gatsby, the onetime guttersnipe learned early how to use her charms to become a hardworking success; she is feted and feared by both the movie studios and their luminaries.
A notorious drunk famously married to the doomed Zelda, Fitzgerald fell hard for his “Shielah” (he never learned to spell her name), a shrewd yet softhearted woman—both a fool for love and nobody’s fool—who would stay with him and help revive his career until his tragic death three years later. Working from Sheilah’s memoirs, interviews, and letters, Sally Koslow revisits their scandalous love affair and Graham’s dramatic transformation in London, bringing Graham and Fitzgerald gloriously to life with the color, glitter, magic, and passion of 1930s Hollywood.