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The general heading of this column is Adventures in Contentment, so I think it's fair to say I am happy that I have finished a novel titled "Faulkner in Love."

Really. In fact, one national publisher that I contacted said they want to see three chapters and a synopsis, which is an encouraging sign thought there's certainly a distance to go if it is to get published.

The protagonist is a Maine-born journalist named Matt Seaver. That being said, most of the action is in Hollywood, because I was once a TV Critic for the Boston Herald and spent many weeks in L.A. on the Television Critics of America (TCA) Press Tour. At this summer event, writers from around the country preview the upcoming shows for the fall TV season.

I usually write about "exploring Maine," but below is the synopsis of a story in which a Maine journalist is exploring Hollywood. Let me know what you think.

“Faulkner in Love” – A Synopsis


By Dyke Hendrickson


What happens when a starlet disappears on the eve of her biggest moment in show business? In this exciting and authentic novel set in Hollywood, the press launches a search!

Matt Seaver, TV editor for the Boston Gazette, arrives in Tinseltown with two missions: to write stories about the new television programs for the upcoming fall season and to find a missing actress named Sasha Stone.

The setting is the annual Television Critics of America (TCA) Press Tour, a real-life event that brings the nation’s TV critics together for one mega-preview. The period is the late ‘80s, one of the golden eras of television (“Cheers,” “The Cosby Show,” “Dallas,” “Lonesome Dove,” etc.) and the action takes place in the press conferences and media outings that actual journalists attend when they are on their newsgathering junket. Scenes of action include the homes of Larry Hagman and Bob Hope, and the Century Plaza Hotel and Playboy Mansion.

The story: The thirty-something Seaver is contacted just before leaving Boston for L.A. by onetime chum Sandy Stone, older sister of Sasha and an aspiring tennis pro who is taking a break from the courts to look for her missing sibling. Both doubt that Sasha would run off just days before the screening of her TV movie, “Faulkner in Love,” and Matt promises to use his Hollywood connections to find her.

Matt has at least two conflicts. His editor, the newly arrived Max Rensky, is demanding more star interviews and cheesecake pictorials so the paper can take advantage of the rising interest in celebrity news. Matt, a former investigative reporter brought low by a libel suit not of his making, is itching to prove himself a serious reporter once again. He must keep Rensky at bay while he frantically works to score his big scoop.

Also, his search for Sasha brings him into the path of mob heavies who want to silence any media coverage of lost young women. It is the beginning of the era of pornography in southern California, and Matt unwittingly uncovers the work of an organization that is coercing women into the skin trade. Once he is almost run down by a speeding car in Beverly Hills. On another occasion, he barely avoids a knife-wielding roller-bladder. He realizes that this story is a matter of life and death.

Characters helping Seaver are Sandy Stone, the determined sister who actually goes to a topless audition in search of clues; Winston Reilly, a cynical career free-lancer who has access to all the gossip in Hollywood; Rashad Adogli, an affable 7-foot black L.A. police detective who hopes to leave the cops to write about crime, not fight it; and Helen Hills, a feisty septuagenarian news clerk in Boston who helps Matt run down local leads from her tiny cubicle at the Gazette.

Other characters include Brandon Barrymore, the suave executive whose Montcalm Studio is producing “Faulkner in Love,” Michelle Mesard, comely publicist promoting the show and Matt’s former girlfriend in Boston; and Frank Moretti, a driven, tough-talking East Coast mobster who has moved to Los Angeles to muscle in on the tawdry edges of the film business.

A peripheral “character” is William Faulkner, shown here. The TV film focuses on his life, starting when he was an aspiring writer in New Orleans and later when he was a paid screenwriter and script doctor in Hollywood. Sasha Stone plays Estelle Oldham, Faulkner’s love interest in the Big Easy in the ‘20s, and readers will learn about the little-known literary colony there that included Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson, Oliver LaFarge, Anita Loos, and for a time, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Faulkner’s boozy, skirt-chasing life in Hollywood in the ‘30s and ‘40s is also referenced.

The story builds to a conclusion that is unexpected - but satisfying.

In the end, Sasha’s name is in lights, Matt has redeemed himself with the biggest story of his career, and Sandy has her sister back – and is ready to restart her career as a tennis pro. Matt also ends up in Sandy’s arms, and the two lovers plan to live together in Sandy’s apartment as Matt, in the best Hollywood tradition, begins work on a screenplay of the very story he helped uncover.