A movie star on a meteoric rise, young James Dean was already being
hailed as one of America's finest actors when he died in a high-speed
car accident in 1955. In one terrible instant a luminous future glowing
with extraordinary promise was snuffed out forever. But what if it
wasn't?
With The Rebel, acclaimed award-winning author Jack Dann pulls James
Dean from the twisted wreckage and offers him a second chance to make an
indelible mark on his art, his culture, and his time in an era of
profound change and devastating social upheaval.
Surviving the horrific crash that leaves him permanently scarred, both
physically and emotionally, the rebellious young star approaches his
rebirth with trepidation, charged with an inescapable new responsibility
to do "something wonderful and important." Cast back into a world of
Hollywood glitz and glamour, a haunted, brooding, and complex artist
climbs higher than even his most fervent admirers imagined he could,
ascending to a pinnacle of success and power no actor of his or any
generation has ever achieved. Yet for Jimmy Dean, the glory road will be
winding and broken, littered with the detritus of exploded dreams and
destroyed love, as it passes through the holiest cultural sites of
postwar 20th-century America--the genius-and-drug-pumped world of the
Beats, the protected inner sanctum of Graceland, the darkest shadows of
Camelot. The lives and futures of Kerouac, Sinatra, Elvis and the
Colonel, and the Kennedys will all be touched by him--yet perhaps none
so deeply as the fragile sex goddess who will always be his greatest
burden and true soul mate, a dazzling and tragically lost phenomenon
named Marilyn--as he moves relentlessly toward an astonishing destiny
that will reconfigure the world.
Ingeniously blending historical fact with brilliant invention, The
Rebel is a hip, fast, mesmerizing ride through the '50s and '60s--an
unforgettable road trip across a nation torn by bitter racial strife and
violently divided by war, with an American legend at the wheel.
