favaudeville theater. While setting up a film in the projectionist's booth, he's confrontedj by the ghost of Lois Weber, a trailblazing motion picture director from Hollywood's silent film era. Lois invites Felix to revisit-and in some cases relive-scenes from his past as they are projected onto the cinema's big screen. The medium of film becomes the lens for Felix to reflect on the women who profoundly affected his life. There's his daughter, Aliza, a Gen Y writer for New York magazine; his sister, Frances, with whom he once shared a complicated bond of kindness and cruelty; and Verna, a fiery would-be contender for the 1951 Miss Rheingold competition, a beauty contest sponsored by a Brooklyn-based beer manufacturer. Against the backdrop of a kaleidoscopic convergence of politics and pop culture, family secrets, and Hollywood iconography, Felix gains an enlightened understanding of the pressures and trials of the women closest to him, and of the feminine ideals and feminist realities that all women, of every era, must face. "A love letter to feminism and to trailblazing women-real and imagined-who have graced the silver screen or stood behind the camera." -BOOKPAGE