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

But the instant I disembarked from the train in Los Angeles, I was enchanted. Far from being a barren cow town, the place seemed drenched in color, crimson and gold and purple and white flowers spilling out of every window box, embracing every streetlamp. I couldn't stop gazing at the tall pepper trees, with their languid, lacy green leaves dripping with clusters of red berries, providing much-needed shade from a sun that rarely found a cloud behind which to hide—something this native San Franciscan thought she would never find tiresome. Orange groves dominated the mountainous landscape that sloped to the beckoning sea, the air so perfumed that I immediately craved the sweet, tangy fruit that I'd never really cared for before.

Everywhere I walked I encountered quaint little squares lined with the small adobe-style homes I'd seen in pictures of Mexico; colorfully tiled fountains centered the squares and people would lounge about, napping or reading or simply relishing being outdoors in shirtsleeves in the middle of February. At first, this drowsiness seemed to embody the town to me, threatening to lull me into a dreamy slumber as well—sleepwalking through a marriage to a man I didn't know, nor, I now realized with exceptionally bad timing, did I care to. Dutifully I sketched away at my job, doing commercial art for an advertising agency, but it was rote now, not at all challenging or fulfilling—how many different ways can you depict a necktie? After the initial enchantment wore off, it seemed to me that I'd come to Los Angeles to sleep my way through a disappointing life I didn't remember choosing.

Sometimes I'd try to rouse myself with a good old-fashioned scolding. What happened to your early ambition to create, to make something lasting, something worthy, my dear? Weren't you going to be the next Rembrandt or Chopin? Weren't you going to set the world on fire? Make your mark, cast a big shadow?

Stupidity, my dear; that's what had happened. Two—not just one, but two—impetuous marriages I could chalk up only to youthful idiocy; I was seventeen when I married for the first time, twenty-two the second. Every time I encountered a setback on the road to becoming the next Rembrandt or Chopin, I blindly said "yes" to the first person who asked. Yet as soon as I'd mumbled "I do," I immediately rebelled. I had no desire to be a conventional society wife to the conventional society husbands I found myself married to.

But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what I wanted to be instead—oh, I couldn't figure out anything, do anything other than fall into miserable marriages in order to put off, for a time, doing or figuring out anything—it all went round and round and managed to dull my early ambition until its edges were harmless and easy for a confirmed sleepwalker like me to ignore.

In the evenings, after a silent meal with the stranger I'd married—truly, I'd stare at Robert, his features still so unfamiliar to me that after two years of sharing a bed I would have been hard-pressed to sketch him from memory—I would lean over the windowsill. Dreamily, I'd inhale the perfumed air, feel the warm breeze carrying salt from the ocean, gape at the beauty around me, but even so, none of it roused me; none of it reached my soul. That remained dormant, waiting. For someone—or something.

One morning, late for work, I scurried around a street corner only to find my path blocked by an immovable cluster of backs. "Excuse me," I muttered, holding on to my hat with one hand, my portfolio clamped beneath my other arm as I roughly tried to elbow my way through the crowd, which stubbornly refused to part. "Please, let me through!"

"All right, bring on the cops!" I heard someone shout.

Frustrated, I pushed my way to the front of the crowd, only to stop and stumble backward. Right there in the middle of the normally busy street stood a man barking through a megaphone, while another man turned the handle of a camera perched atop a wobbly tripod. I glanced around nervously; it was as if I'd stumbled upon something unlawful, perhaps. Like a bank heist.

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.