A Map to Paradise
"Author Susan Meissner is a veteran who knows how spin a story . . ."
In 1956, on a beautiful cul-de-sac in wealthy Malibu on the California coast, Melanie Cole, Eva Kruse, and June Blankenship are all trying to figure out how to keep going.
Less than a year ago, Melanie's movie career had taken off spectacularly with her first major role. But her lover (the leading man in that breakout movie) has been identified as a Communist, and now, in the midst of the McCarthy witch hunts, Melanie is blacklisted by association.
Eva, who is working as Melanie's housekeeper, is a refugee from Poland, still traumatized by the deaths of her family and fiancé.
June, Melanie's neighbor, has devoted her life for the last several years to taking care of her reclusive brother-in-law, Elwood, a onetime award-winning screenwriter. She's in love with him, and she knows he probably doesn't share those feelings.
Actually, none of those descriptions is completely true.
A Map to Paradise is the engrossing story of how these three women keep stumbling over each other—and needing each other—as they try to maintain their individual secrets while preventing their lives from falling apart.
"The three of them were unlikely companions," Melanie thinks at one point, but they shared "their desire to recover that exquisite feeling of knowing you are right where you belong, and that you can rest there because no one is trying to take it from you."
Author Susan Meissner is a veteran who knows how spin a story, with a workable writing style that neither stands out nor gets in the way. She manages to keep the three protagonists, who narrate the book in alternating chapters, a few degrees clear of stereotypes.
For instance, Melanie is a naive ingenue from Nebraska with stars in her eyes. She may or may not have real acting talent. But from the start, she has the integrity not to name names of supposed Communists to the House Un-American Activities Committee, even though that might be the only way she can ever hope to get a role in a movie again.
"If I go back on my promise" to stay silent, she tells June, early in the narrative, "I'll have nothing . . . This hell I'm in can't last forever. It can't. I've done nothing wrong."
Eva's backstory is certainly not typical of post-World War II novels, although the larding of hints is a bit heavy handed. June adds an interesting mix of controlled anger and selfishness to the mousy sister-in-law cliche.
Unfortunately, there are too many plot twists for a story that has plenty of its own inherent drama, and some of them are too pat.
On the other hand, one of the undramatic pleasures of this novel is the description of Malibu before it became the flashy scene of surfers and McMansions that it is today. This book's Malibu is an enclave for the wealthy, of course, but understated. Just try to imagine a movie star (and target of political investigation) living in a house where anyone could walk up to the front door and ring the bell!