New York Times bestselling author Wally Lamb weaves an evocative,
deeply affecting tapestry of one Baby Boomer's life--Felix Funicello,
introduced in Wishin' and Hopin'--and the trio of unforgettable women
who have changed it, in this radiant homage to the resiliency, strength,
and power of women.
I'll Take You There centers on Felix, a film scholar who runs a Monday
night movie club in what was once a vaudeville theater. One evening,
while setting up a film in the projectionist booth, he's confronted 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.
In these magical movies, the medium of film becomes the lens for Felix
to reflect on the women who profoundly impacted his life. There's his
daughter Aliza, a Gen Y writer for New York Magazine who is trying to
align her post-modern feminist beliefs with her lofty career ambitions;
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 that became a marketing phenomenon for
two decades. At first unnerved by these ethereal apparitions, Felix
comes to look forward to his encounters with Lois, who is later joined
by the spirits of other celluloid muses.
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.
