More on Marilyn Monroe

FREE DOWNLOAD OF CATCH THE SUN KINDLE EDITION: AUGUST 20-24

In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn's death, I am offering a free download of Catch the Sun, a novel inspired by the events of Marilyn's final summer.

In 1962, Marilyn Monroe was exhausted, depressed and losing hope that she would ever be given the kinds of dramatic roles she so desperately wanted. She had recently been institutionalized at the Payne-Whitney Psychiatric Hospital in New York. In the spring, she came home to Los Angeles and rented a small bungalow in preparation for playing "another dumb blonde" in a movie called "Something's Got To Give"

By this time, Marilyn who was thirty-six years old, was seriously addicted to barbiturates and was drinking heavily. Her marriage to Arthur Miller had disintegrated into a bitter divorce two years earlier. Her life was going nowhere but down. She was holding onto her career by her fingernails.

By the end of May, she'd been fired from "Something's Got To Give."

With no movie to give her life structure, Marilyn began drifting, coming ever closer to the despair that would suck her down into death.

But she could make one final effort to save herself: she could find one last thing to cling to.

During this final summer Marilyn began looking for a house, a safe haven that could function as a fortress supplying the security and stability that her life lacked.

In Catch the Sun I tell the story of the house Marilyn wants to buy but can't have. It is the perfect house, the one she has always sought. It faces the sea, promising vast possibility and an end to suffering. Here, in this house, a beautiful little girl lives with her mother, a famous artist. Could this child be the daughter Marilyn gave up for adoption three years earlier? Could the strange fascination the little girl feels toward Marilyn be proof that they are bound by ties stronger than death or time?

Thirty years later, the child, now grown into a lovely but troubled model named Amanda Grace, receives visitations from the long-dead Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn has a message for her. She needs to tell Amanda things--things only a mother can tell her daughter.

Take advantage of this opportunity to download Catch the Sun for free starting tomorrow, August 20.