"Sublime and immersive . . . If you wish you could disappear to a
Greek island right now, I highly recommend."
--Jojo Moyes, #1 bestselling author of Me Before You
"This gorgeous, glimmering summer read is itself perfect summer:
irresistible and deep, Samson's lyric sentences pulling you into
unforgettable sunlight and shadow."
--Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of White Houses
It's 1960, and the world teeters on the edge of cultural, political,
sexual, and artistic revolution. On the Greek island of Hydra, a
proto-commune of poets, painters, and musicians revel in dreams at the
feet of their unofficial leaders, the writers Charmian Clift and George
Johnston, troubled queen and king of bohemia. At the center of this
circle of misfit artists are the captivating and inscrutable Axel
Jensen, his magnetic wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian ingenue
poet named Leonard Cohen.
When eighteen-year-old Erica stumbles into their world, she's fresh off
the boat from London with nothing but a bundle of blank notebooks and a
burning desire to leave home in the wake of her mother's death. Among
these artists, she will find an unraveling utopia where everything is
tested--the nature of art, relationships, and her own innocence.
Intoxicating and immersive, A Theater for Dreamers is a spellbinding
tour-de-force about the beauty between naïveté and cruelty, chaos and
utopia, artist and muse--and about the wars waged between men and women
on the battlegrounds of genius. Roiling with the heat of a Grecian
summer, A Theater for Dreamers is, according to the Guardian, "a
blissful piece of escapism" and "a surefire summer hit."
