Excerpt from The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Hey, are you an outsider?" A man, barely taller than me, poked me on the shoulder.

"I—yes, I suppose I am!"

"What are you here for?" He narrowed his eyes, and I blushed as if I'd been caught trespassing. Were normal people not allowed in movie studios? Had Owen been toying with me? Was this revenge for rebuffing him?

"To see—to see Miss Pickford?" I detested the question mark in my voice, but this young man, despite his short stature, looked capable of picking me up by the scruff of my neck and tossing me outside to be swept away by the hot wind like the rest of the trash.

"Mary? She don't like outsiders. You sure?"

I took a big breath, remembering who I was, why I'd ever thought I had a right to be here in the first place. "Y-yes. I'm quite sure."

The boy took another step toward me, but I held my ground, although I did grip my reticule in case I needed to clobber him over the head with it. The boy's eyes were blue and hard and not a little bit menacing—until I detected a gleam dancing behind them. The promise of mischief, perhaps? That dancing light won out; his face relaxed. Suddenly, he was no longer a menacing thug but a laughing leprechaun with a surprising dimple in his cheek.

"Well, okay, then. I guess you'll do. Mary's in there." He stabbed a finger toward the closed door. Odd; this boy had acted much more protective of Miss Pickford than her own husband had. For when you got right down to it, Owen Moore had no idea who I really was, or what my intentions might be.

"I know, Mr. Moore told me."

"Owen!" The boy grimaced. "So, Miss Outsider. You like it here?" He jerked his thumb in the general direction of the set area.

"Yes, yes, I do!" I surprised myself with this answer. But I did like it here, chaotic and strange as it was. I had suspected—hoped—that I would, but even so, hearing it out loud, in my own voice, was stunning. It was as if I'd agreed to dive headfirst into a shallow pond.

Movies.

The first time I'd heard the word, it was used to describe people and not those flickering, mesmerizing images on a screen. We don't take no movies here, landlady after landlady told me when I'd first arrived in Los Angeles two years ago.

"What's a movie?" I'd ask, bewildered.

"You know, them people running all over the place with those cameras, makin' those flickers. Those movies. You're not one of them, are you?" Always a suspicious, squinty-eyed glare as I attempted to look as un-movie-like as possible, because I desperately wanted the room. Still, the back of my neck twitched and I thought, for a moment, of answering in the affirmative; how appallingly prejudiced these landladies were!

"No, I'm not a movie," I'd confess, practicality winning out over solidarity with the downtrodden.

"Fine, fine, then you can rent the room," and I'd be allowed to inspect such modest abodes, baldly furnished with dusty, moldy Victorian furniture and threadbare oriental rugs, that I had to marvel that the owner could afford to look down on anyone, let alone one of the mysterious movies.

I was a native San Franciscan, born and bred, and everyone warned me that I'd take one look at Los Angeles, turn right around, and catch the next train home. "It's a wild and wooly town full of heathens!" "There's not a single museum there!" "I heard they drive cattle down the streets, and you can kill yourself on the cacti!"

Mother, especially, pleaded for me to stay put.

"Why you would want to go to such an untamed place is beyond me," she had said with a sniff. "There's plenty for you to sketch here, Frances, if you're still bent on becoming an artist."

I refrained from reminding Mother that my husband—husband number two, a number that definitely stung and so was best not mentioned—was being sent to Los Angeles to open up a branch of his father's steel company, and it was my wifely obligation to accompany him. It wasn't that I was exactly thrilled about moving; I loved San Francisco. I loved its hills, its stately new buildings springing up from the earthquake just eight years before, its museums, its theater and opera houses, the determined genteel quality, even if most of its residents were only a generation—or less—removed from the gold rush.

Excerpted from The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin. Copyright © 2018 by Melanie Benjamin. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.