Jack & Susan in 1913

It is 1913, and the nation's leading movie companies are headquartered in New York brownstones and the shooting lots are in nearby Fort Lee, N.J. Susan Bright begins writing in this disreputable new business after a broken leg ends her fledgling career as a Broadway actress. Jack Beaumont may be the heir to millions, but he assumes the role of an impoverished inventor to win Susan's love. Together with her three-legged dog, Tripod, they do battle in the ""patents war'' and follow the film companies to Hollywood. McDowell's affection for and knowledge of the period are strongly evident, and his plot, which draws on the conventions of contemporaneous popular fiction, is properly melodramatic, improbable and romantic. Although the novel is somewhat thin, it constitutes a pleasant love story with a colorful background. (April)