The Acrobat

An Oprah Daily Best Novel Based on a True StoryDelaney[s] splendid fictional biography of Cary Grant . . . perfectly befits the glamour and fakery of his subject.Publishers Weekly(starred review)Everyone wants to be Cary Grant, mused the worlds most famous leading man. Even Iwant to be Cary Grant.Its 1959, and the 55-year-old man who calls himself Cary Grant is at the peakof a charmed career. Hes also on a turbulent journey to find the core of a selfhe hardly seems to know anymore. Introduced to the wonder drug LSD as part ofhis therapy at The Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills, he embarks on upward ofone hundred psychedelic tripsat times harrowing journeys. And on the way, herediscovers the long-ago boy who faced the world as Archie Leach, the earnest,gap-toothed stilt walker and tumbler he once was, long ago. InThe Acrobat, fiction writer Edward J. Delaney takes on the elusive characterof Cary Grant. He imagines the inner life of a man who spent a career brilliantlycreating a persona as ethereal as his best roles. As Grant launches on LSD-fueledtrajectories of discovery,The Acrobatlikewise transports readers through hisfractured upbringing, his start in English vaudeville, his life on the Hollywood sets,and his relationships with fellow travelers prominent in his life: Howard Hughes,Randolph Scott, Blake Edwards, Tony Curtis, two of the five women he married,and more. Amid the endless versions of himself and the characters hes played, heyearns to shape himself into something singular, forged from the layers of illusionhes smilingly foisted on the world, and for which the world has come to love him.This riveting dramatization of the actors life takes us beyond the firm terrainthat biographies tread, to offer a new perspective on a complex Hollywood legend.