A Golden Life

Embark on a journey to 1930s California in Ginny Kubitz Moyer’s spellbinding historical novel in which a woman must choose between friendship and her own secrets.

It’s 1938, and twenty-five-year-old secretary Frances Healey is ready for a fresh start. Hoping to forget her painful past, she takes a job working for Hollywood producer Lawrence Merrill. She quickly becomes absorbed in VistaGlen Studios’s biggest project: a movie about Kitty Ridley, the legendary stage actress who disappeared from the public eye in 1895. The movie will be the making of Belinda Vail, a beautiful ingenue who is hungry for a breakout role—and also happens to be Mr. Merrill’s love interest.

But the real Miss Ridley has other ideas. Now ninety years old, she writes a scathing letter insisting the studio halt production of the film. Hoping to change her mind, Frances and Mr. Merrill embark on a trip to find the actress—only to land in a Victorian farmhouse in the Napa Valley. But as she learns the truth of Miss Ridley’s life, Frances finds herself confronting the very past she’s been trying to forget. And with the arrival of the ambitious Belinda, loyalties will be tested, bonds will be forged, and Frances will learn where true happiness lies. Set in Hollywood and the sun-drenched Napa countryside, A Golden Life explores friendship, forgiveness, and the power of honoring your own story.

Ginny Kubitz Moyer is a California native with a love of local history. She is the author of the novel The Seeing Garden (She Writes Press, 2023) as well as several works of spiritual nonfiction. A graduate of Pomona College and Stanford University, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and one rescue dog.