Daredevil DEA agent Jack Walker cruised down Hollywood Boulevard into the best unscheduled party of his career: a car-jacking featuring a .38 semiautomatic and his own movieland heroics. In any other city, the pretty woman he saved would be a star. Here she was Charlotte Rae, a former B-movie bombshell waving a lottery ticket straight from hell - a chance to get inside her husband's drug-smuggling empire. Charlotte Rae and Buddy Wingate were one of California's self-made platinum couples: the high-rolling discount furniture king and his bottle-blond trophy. It was Jack's job to penetrate...

Ward once again explores the alchemy of stubborn yearnings and unrealized dreams amidst the well-tended rowhouses of his native city. There's a mounting fury in Tommy Fallon's heart in the fall of 1965. He's finally found his life's calling - thanks to the inspiration of Professor Extraordinaire Sylvester Spaulding. Young Tom wants to be lifted on the wings of genius, to ascend to a clean, well-lighted place where cultured people talk about deep things. But how can this college boy learn anything about life or art while living in his family's house of pain? Pop Fallon's youthful dreams of...