In a Town Called Paradox

<p><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>I wasn't looking for Marilyn Monroe when I bumped into her even though I knew she was in town filming <em>River of No Return</em></strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>...</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>So begins </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In A Town Called Paradox</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> - a novel set in Utah when the </span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Big Five Hollywood studios </strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>arrive to shoot their blockbuster movies.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>After her mother's sudden death teenage</span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Corin Dunbar </strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>is banished to live with her aunt Jessie an obsessively religious spinster who runs a failing cattle ranch near a dusty speck of a town called Paradox in southeast Utah.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>It's the mid-1950s and Corin hates her new life until the arrival of Hollywood turns the rural backwater into a playground for glamorous stars. Seduced by the glitz of the movies Corin finds work with the studios but after a brush with the casting couch channels her growing ambition into saving the ranch-the jewel of the Dunbar family for three generations.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>    When Corin falls for</span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Ark Stevenson</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> - a charismatic stranger who was raised by missionaries in the Amazon jungle (then drawn to Paradox by his fascination with the Westerns that are filmed there) - her future seems bright. That's not the outlook facing </span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Yiska Begay</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> a Navajo Indian and convicted murderer who's on the run near Paradox. These different lives unexpectedly collide when a tragic accident wrecks Corin's dreams and forces her to make an agonizing decision that changes the course of her life forever.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Told mainly by Corin-now a middle-aged woman still haunted by this watershed moment-</span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In A Town Called Paradox </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>is a </span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>compelling read</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> that redefines the </span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>meaning of love </strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>as it asks the question: If each of us has a life story then who decides how it unfolds - and how it should end?</span></p>