Typewriter Beach

The novel alternates between two timelines, one set in 1957 Hollywood and Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, and another in 2018, tracing how secrets kept across decades shape three generations.

In February 1957, Isabella Giori is a young actress under a seven-year studio contract. Born Fanny Fumagalli, she has had her hair dyed Hitchcock blond and her name changed to position her as "the new Grace Kelly." She auditions for Alfred Hitchcock, and though he dismisses her without a traditional reading, she impresses him with a line from Rear Window. Weeks later, studio fixer Eddie Mannix sends her to a cottage the studio owns in Carmel with instructions to stay hidden.

The clatter of a typewriter wakes her at five the next morning. She meets Leo Chazan, a writer who arrived in Hollywood in 1947 with a screenwriting contract, having attended Dartmouth through connections to screenwriter Salka Viertel. In 1953, Mannix sent Leo to the same cottage to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which investigated suspected communists in the entertainment industry. Rather than name names, Leo invoked his Fifth Amendment right and was blacklisted, barred from working openly in film. He bought the cottage next door, named it the Fade Inn, and has spent four years writing under pseudonyms for meager pay.

The narrative shifts to February 2018. Gemma Chazan, Leo's twenty-six-year-old granddaughter, arrives at the Fade Inn a month after his death, carrying his ashes in a plastic bag sealed with a red zip tie. A screenwriter whose only credit is the small film Eleanor After Dark, Gemma has been unable to write since her mother Rebecca's death the prior year. She sits at Leo's typewriter and types "FADE IN:" but nothing more comes. Isabella, now eighty-two and living next door in the cottage she named Manderley, introduces herself without revealing her connection to Leo. Sam Kenneally, a twenty-eight-year-old video game developer who lives across the street, joins them. Sam cocreated the successful game Children of Chaos with his Stanford classmates Madison "Mads" Amesbury and André Jackson and grew close to Leo in his final months. Sam and Gemma share an instant rapport and toast Leo with his scotch.

Back in 1957, Isabella watches the Oscar ceremony at Leo's cottage. When the writing award goes to "Robert Rich," a writer who never appears to collect it, Leo celebrates so intensely that Isabella suspects he knows the winner. Leo reveals that even stating his own name during the hearing was dangerous, a detail whose significance emerges later.

The novel gradually reveals why Isabella is in Carmel. Her married costar Hugh Bolin mentored her on set, defended her against a bullying director, and became her lover. When she discovered she was pregnant, Hugh gave her Mannix's number and told her never to mention his name. The studio arranged an illegal abortion in Carmel, coordinating the cottage, the doctor, and groceries to keep her hidden. She was to pay two thousand dollars, with no anesthesia and no help if anything went wrong. At the Jade Tree Motel, she enters the room but panics and flees. She returns weeks later, but the doctor says she is too far along. When she tries a third time, he again refuses, telling her the baby has quickened, meaning it has begun to move.

Leo reveals his own history. Born in Germany to a Jewish family who fled to France when Hitler rose to power, he began delivering Resistance newspapers at sixteen, an act that brought the Nazis to their door. His mother Rebekka, sister Margalit, brother David, and Margalit's infant daughter were deported to a concentration camp and killed. A Resistance woman named Berthe Chazan led Leo over the Pyrenees to Spain using forged documents bearing her own dead son's name: Léon Chazan. Berthe was arrested on her return and died in the Gurs internment camp in France. Leo could not risk HUAC uncovering his false identity, because his ties to the communist Resistance would have destroyed him.

Mannix informs Isabella that Hugh will not take the baby because it is a girl. Leo offers his cottage, and Isabella moves in. Over the following months, Leo writes The Ghost of Hawk Tower with Isabella in mind as the lead, and she helps shape the dialogue. He dyes her hair brown and gives her a gold band so she can move through Carmel unrecognized. Their bond deepens but remains platonic. Before the baby arrives, Leo secretly adds Isabella's name to the title page and mails the script to Hitchcock.

In October 1957, Isabella gives birth to a girl. Hitchcock reads the script and offers her the lead; she negotiates fifty thousand dollars for the screenplay. Leo proposes marriage, not out of romantic love but to give the baby a family. Isabella recognizes that Leo is gay. She declines but asks him to raise the child, naming the baby Rebecca Chazan: "Rebecca" for Leo's mother, "Chazan" for both the real Léon and Berthe, who gave her life to save Leo. Isabella kisses the sleeping baby's forehead and departs with Mannix, leaving the fifty thousand dollars inside Leo's door.

The film, released as Double Deception, earns Isabella Oscar nominations for acting and writing. To protect Rebecca from learning who gave birth to her, Isabella and Leo end their open friendship. Isabella buys Manderley years later, maintaining a hidden bond with Leo but never visiting when Rebecca is in Carmel.

In 2018, Gemma discovers a wall safe holding both scripts, a camera with undeveloped film, and other documents. She and Sam develop the photos; the images show a young woman whose face is never visible. Gemma watches Double Deception and recognizes it as the same story as the script from the safe. Isabella admits the photos are of her, offering a partial truth to deflect deeper questions. Gemma also confronts her own career: Showrunner Darren Dunn exposed himself during a job interview, and when she refused him, he retaliated by destroying her reputation, costing her opportunities.

Sam's backstory emerges in parallel. He lost his entire family in a plane crash on the way to his Stanford graduation, and the characters in Children of Chaos are his family reimagined as Greek gods. Gemma initially believes Mads is Sam's girlfriend, but Sam clarifies that Mads is André's longtime partner. As their relationship deepens, Sam takes Gemma to Hawk Tower, the stone tower built by poet Robinson Jeffers, before dawn; she tells him she wants to write a screenplay set there.

The novel reveals that Leo, diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, asked Isabella to help him die rather than put Gemma through another prolonged loss. Isabella laced his morning coffee with foxglove, a toxic plant, and sat with him as his heart grew irregular. His death was recorded as a heart attack.

On Oscar Sunday 2018, Gemma, Sam, and Isabella watch the ceremony at the Fade Inn. Leo is honored in the In Memoriam segment. Isabella gives Gemma both scripts and confesses she fronted the screenplay for Leo. She tells Gemma that her mother was named after Leo's mother Rebekka and that Gemma's own name, Margalit, was the name of Leo's sister, but she does not reveal she is Gemma's biological grandmother. After the ceremony, Gemma and Isabella scatter Leo's ashes off Carmel Point. Isabella gives Gemma the cowrie shell Leo gave her in 1957, carried at every audition since.

Back at the Fade Inn, Gemma opens her laptop and types "FADE IN:" with the ding-and-zip sound effect Sam installed, then adds her byline: "by Margalit Chazan." In an epilogue set at the 2024 Oscars, Gemma wins Best Original Screenplay for her own Ghost of Hawk Tower, a romantic comedy about the blacklist inspired by Leo's title and setting. In her acceptance speech, she announces that the Academy has restored Leo's writing credit for Double Deception and dedicates the Oscar to him. Isabella watches from the audience, Leo's ashes tucked against her heart, finding some measure of self-forgiveness at last.