From the award-winning, bestselling author of Chang & Eng and Half a Life , a new novel about Lucille Ball, a thrilling love story starring Hollywood’s first true media mogul, and an epic multi-layered look at America’s most fascinating era.
This indelible romance begins with a daring conceit—that the author’s grandfather may have had an affair with Lucille Ball. Strauss offers a fresh view of a celebrity America loved more than any other.
Lucille Ball—the most powerful woman in the history of Hollywood—starred in America’s first big-time interracial marriage. She owned more movie sets than did any movie studio. And she more or less single-handedly created the modern TV business. And yet Lucille’s off-camera life was in disarray. While acting out a happy marriage for millions, in private she suffered. Her partner couldn’t stay faithful. She struggled to manage her fame with the demands of being a mother, a creative genius, an entrepreneur, and, most of all, a symbol.
The Queen of Tuesday —Strauss’s follow-up to the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Half a Life —mixes fact and fiction, memoir and novel, to imagine the provocative story of a woman we thought we knew.