Edna Ferber Mysteries

In 1955, grande dame authoress Edna Ferber is visiting L.A. for the filming of her epic novel, Giant. Edna is looking forward to meeting Rock Hudson, Liz Taylor, and especially the film's gifted young breakout star, James Dean. A charismatic rebel, Dean attracts attention, devotion, and trouble wherever he goes. Now he is being blackmailed by a young extra from the movie who accuses him of getting her pregnant.

In 1904, the future best-selling writer Edna Ferber, then a 19-year-old fledgling reporter in Wisconsin, teams up with famed escape artist Harry Houdini to solve the baffling murder of a girl who has mysteriously disappeared from a locked room at the local high school.

In June 1951, Edna Ferber heads to Hollywood to support an old friend, Max, who has found himself blacklisted in the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings, which have rattled Hollywood with allegations of Communist sympathies. She has no plans of becoming involved with the soon-to-be-released MGM film based on her bestselling novel Show Boat.

A sweltering July in Chicago, 1923. Edna Ferber, now a famous short-story writer, is supposed to be researching the novel that will become So Big, her Pulitzer-Prize winner. With her mother, Julia, she spends the week visiting her mother's old childhood friend, Esther Newmann, who lives with her family on the edge of the bustling Maxwell Street Jewish marketplace. But the awful specter of a scandalous murder 15 years before suddenly haunts Edna.