"Hidden in a compartment of my grandmother's bottom dresser drawer was an old scrapbook. Pressed inside were photographs of a beautiful young woman and hundreds of newspaper clippings about vaudeville shows and the movie industry. This is how I learned about my great aunt, Ruby Adams. As a child, I combed through the items that chronicled her life as a vaudeville headliner--her success and her tragedy."

So begins this novel set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, Prohibition and vaudeville in San Francisco in 1925. Waiting in the Wings tells the story of Ruby Adams, a vaudeville actress...