In a Town Called Paradox

I WASN’T looking for Marilyn Monroe even though I knew she was in town filming River of No Return... So begins In A Town Called Paradox – set in Utah during the 1950s when the Big Five Hollywood studios arrived to film their blockbuster movies.

Corin Dunbar – banished to live with her aunt Jessie, an obsessively religious spinster who runs a failing cattle ranch in Utah – hates her new life until Hollywood transforms the rural backwater of Paradox into a playground for glamorous stars. Seduced by the glitz, Corin finds work in the movies, 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.

When Corin falls for Ark Stevenson – a charismatic stranger drawn to Paradox by his fascination with the movies that are filmed there – her future seems bright. That’s not the outlook facing Yiska Begay, a Navajo on the run from prison.

These three different lives unexpectedly collide as each of them seeks their own kind of freedom: Corin is determined to cast off the restrictions imposed on her by society; Ark yearns for a spiritual freedom after he suffers a horrific accident; and Yiska is desperate to regain the physical freedom he has unjustly lost.

In a gripping climax, Corin is faced with an agonizing dilemma. She can win them the freedoms they crave – but only at a heartbreaking cost?

Told mainly by Corin – now a middle-aged woman still haunted by her decision – In A Town Called Paradox is a poignant love story that explores some of the ideas and beliefs that shape our lives as it asks the question: If each of us has a life story, who determines how it unfolds – and how it should end?

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