A brilliant first novel catapults Arthur Youngblood Hawke form an impoverished Kentucky town to the heights of New York"s literary world. The tall, ruggedly good-looking writer is suddenly big news, and everyone can sense his magic and the heady smell of money-to-be-made: publishers, agents, film producers, theatrical entrepreneurs, predatory women--a gallery of acidly comic portraits. During his turbulent mercurial career, Hawke struggles to keep writing his books despite the demands thrust upon him by celebrity and wealth, and the story drives at last to a stark, devastating climax.