It's 1912 in Hollywood, the birth of the Movies, and Mabel Normand, beautiful and funny, the model of the modern comedy star, was shocking the world. This intimate novel takes us inside the earliest days of the motion pictures, together with the Queen of Comedy. As sharply observed as it is historically accurate, this is the tale of a young man's coming of age with the Movies, and his passionate yet destructive love for the queen of slapstick- Mabel Normand. Their story is the birth of our media age.