“'Mercury Pictures Presents,' which Hogarth will publish on Tuesday," writes Sarah Lyall in today's New York Times, "is set in Los Angeles in the 1940s, and is both a love letter to Hollywood’s Golden Age, whose films Marra watched with his father as a boy in Washington, D.C., and a homage to his own immigrant family... "The book reflects familiar Marra themes: how extreme times force people into impossible devil’s bargains; how propaganda muddies reality; how hard it is to get to the truth of anything, except perhaps by piecing it together long afterward; how ordinary people can find unexpected reservoirs of heroism. With its portrait of America in extremis after the shock of Pearl Harbor, the novel offers sobering parallels to today, like the demonization of immigrants, the rise of America-first nationalism, the slippery nature of truth. "Marra has a facility for attending to both the sweep of history and the minutiae of his characters’ lives with pathos and humanity. 'It has to do with his talent as a writer, but really, it’s that he’s interested in everyone,' said the writer and bookstore owner Ann Patchett, who met Marra when his first book was published. 'He’s willing to look at things the rest of us don’t want to look at ever, and then he’s still able to be funny and a great storyteller. There are people who pull off one or the other but there’s practically no one who pulls off both.'" These amazing pics are by Bryan Derballa for the New York Times, taken at Brooklyn's historic Kings Theatre. Link to Sarah’s wonderful story in my bio.