Synopsis:
1956, Malibu, California: Something is not right on Paradise Circle.
Her name has been added to the Hollywood blacklist and her life is on hold. Melanie Cole was so recently a rising star, but now the future she dreamed of is in jeopardy and she has little choice in company. There is her next-door neighbor, Elwood, but the screenwriter’s agoraphobia allows only for short chats through open windows. He has become her sole confidante, though, as she and her housekeeper, Eva, an immigrant from war-torn Europe, rarely engage in conversation.
One early morning Melanie and Eva spot Elwood’s sister-in-law and caretaker, June, digging in his beloved rose garden. Thereafter, they don’t see Elwood at all anymore. Where could a man who hasn’t left his house in nearly a decade possibly have gone?
They scheme to find out if something has happened to him. But unexpected secrets are revealed among all three women, leading to an unlikely alliance that seems the only way for any of them to hold on to what they still call their own.
But theirs is a fragile pact. And one little spark could send it all up in smoke . . .
Review:
USA Today bestselling author Susan Meissner says she was researching the 1950’s when she learned “how fearful people were in the early years of the Cold War.” Americans were terrified that their way of life would be taken from them, and peace in the world was tenuous given that World War II was not that far away in the proverbial rearview mirror. She began considering “displacement” and possible reactions to it. “What does someone do when they’ve no sense of home anymore? How do they live without it? What are they willing to do to get it back? And if the loss of home is imminent, what are they willing to risk to keep it from being taken from them?”
The result is A Map to Paradise featuring three female main characters, each of whom has been displaced from or is facing the imminent loss of her home, lifestyle, and the security that comes from having a place to belong.
Melanie Kolander disappointed her parents when she left Omaha, Nebraska and moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as an actress rather than going to college. Known professionally as Melanie Cole, she scored bit parts in movies before finally landing a lead role in a successful film that was released just months ago. She also had a high-profile relationship with her costar, Carson Edwards – arranged by the studio – that they both enjoyed, even though neither saw it as a real or lasting romance. Melanie was finally earning enough money to splurge on luxury items and looking forward to the start of filming on her next big movie in which she would again have the starring role.
And then, at just twenty-five years of age, her dream life evaporated before it really got started. Because of her association with Carson, her name was placed on Hollywood’s blacklist, she lost the role in the upcoming film, and no studio will hire her. Her parents are embarrassed and, along with her agent, have urged her to come home to Omaha, enroll in college courses, and build a more stable life for herself. Melanie steadfastly refuses.
Instead, wealthy Carson has admirably arranged for Melanie to escape to a rented house on Paradise Circle in Malibu and agreed to pay Melanie’s living expenses for the foreseeable future, hoping that the Red Scare will be short-lived, and their careers will survive. In the meantime, they must avoid being seen together in order to keep further rumors from circulating. Melanie not only is not a member of the Communist party, she has never attended any meetings, and is not even sure what it means to be a Communist. Like too many in the entertainment industry, she has been unjustly targeted solely because of her relationship with Carson, who has been suspiciously cagey when Melanie has questioned him as to whether he is a Communist or sympathizer.
Isolated and alone in her rental house, Melanie has had no social life for months and has sought solace and advice about her predicament from her next-door neighbor, Elwood Blankenship, a successful screenwriter. Since a tragic automobile accident nearly a decade ago in Palm Springs that claimed the life of his passenger, Ruthie Brink, a woman he was dating at the time, Elwood has suffered from agoraphobia. He has not ventured out of his residence in all those years, and converses with Melanie either while near a doorway or from his bedroom window, where he spends countless hours drafting scripts that are delivered to the studios for him. Elwood’s brother, Frank, and his wife, June, moved in to care for him after the accident. And June remained after Frank’s sudden death from a heart attack five years ago.
The other person Melanie interacts with consistently is Eva Kruse, the housekeeper who spends six hours each weekday mostly cleaning a house that is already clean and preparing meals for Melanie. The two women don’t converse much, and Eva is conscientious and reserved. Dispatched by Marvelous Maids, Eva would like to secure a different assignment, but fears that lodging a request could backfire and she needs the job.
Not only is Malibu a long bus ride from the room she rents, Eva harbors secrets that could both complicate matters for Melanie and result in Eva’s deportation from the United States. Eva is a thirty-year-old survivor of World War II who lost her home, family, and the young man, Sascha, she loved and planned to spend her life with. After the war, she spent time in Displaced Persons camps before landing a housekeeping position in London and, from there, emigrating to Los Angeles after securing a sponsor. But Eva falsified her history and immigration officials would take swift action should the actual details about her background become known.
As the story opens in December 1956, sleepless Melanie is shocked when she observes June digging up several of Elwood’s beloved rose bushes in the yard. Melanie cannot fathom why June would do such a thing, especially in the middle of the night, knowing how it will upset Elwood. Meissner relates that June came to life in her “mind as an image of a sad and desperate woman digging up rose bushes at three a.m.” and she filled in the details – June’s history, her relationships with both Elwood and Frank, and the events that have led up to that pivotal moment.
Melanie questions June about not only the roses, but Elwood’s sudden disappearance. She doesn’t see him in the bedroom window, is not able to talk with him through the fence, and June refuses to call him to the telephone when Melanie calls. June has always been protective of Elwood, but is particularly evasive, insisting that Elwood isn’t speaking to anyone because he is experiencing a depressive episode and needs to focus on completing a script that is due to the studio soon. Melanie does not buy June’s explanations, growing increasingly worried about Elwood and fearing that he is not in his house at all. But where could he be? Learning that June injured her back while moving the rose bushes, she concocts a scheme to send Eva next door to assist June with housekeeping . . . and find out whether Elwood is there and safe.
Meissner set her story in Malibu, “a fragile paradise,” on a fictional street named Paradise Circle. Malibu is not only set on the beautiful Pacific coast, it has long been known as “the wildfire capital of North America,” and the timing of the publication of Meissner’s tale – March 2025 – is eerily ironic, coming just a couple of months after the historic Palisades fire that decimated huge portions of the area. For Meissner, the setting presciently illustrated that “you can’t know for certain that what you think of as home there will always be around.”
Eva and June bond, developing a relationship that can be mutually beneficial. Eva shares some of her secrets with June, who dangles offers of assistance securing a better job in exchange for Eva’s cooperation. Soon, Melanie finds herself joining their surprising alliance in an effort to ensure that potentially devastating truths remain buried.
Meissner’s characters are fully developed and sympathetic. Melanie, who naively came to Hollywood with big dreams and quickly learned that success can be both hard-earned and wrongly ripped away, is ambitious, tenacious, and surprisingly principled. She becomes the voice of reason when she learns the truth and what is at stake. Eva already knows how it feels to lose everything, but is intent on surviving, even though she has remained heartbroken about losing Sascha. Others, including her landlady, Yvonne, have urged her to put her past behind her and open her heart to love again, but she has been unable to do so. Nonetheless, she has been adept at self-preservation in the past and is ready to again do whatever the situation requires. She feels a kinship with and fondness for both Melanie and June but is particularly protective of June. She feels great compassion for her because Eva knows all too well what it is like to be pushed to the brink.
June is the most complex of the three characters. She has a victim mentality that is infuriating, even when viewed within the context of the time period. At a time when women were disqualified by their gender from securing a mortgage in order to purchase real property and were expected to marry, raise a family, and let men be the decision-makers, June fears losing the only home and security she has ever known. Her mother left her home alone overnight in a closet, and Frank (with her acquiescence) invested in an unsuccessful venture that cost them their home. With Elwood in idyllic Malibu, she finally has the home she has longed for and the possibility of losing it is more than she can bear. Inarguably, she made poor choices over the years and developed unrealistic expectations, but she remains a tragic figure, at least to Eva and, to a lesser extent, Melanie.
The story is intriguing and as events unfold, Meissner explores her characters’ pasts, revealing how they came to be on Paradise Circle at the same time, how their pasts have shaped and motivated them, and why they must trust each other and work together to carry out their plan in order to secure the kind of futures for themselves they want.
At its core, A Map to Paradise is a tale of friendship. Meissner employs an outrageous premise, punctuated with surprising revelations and complications, to demonstrate how three women unite, initially motivated by secrecy and fears of betrayal, but end up protecting, supporting, and assisting each other through an unimaginable crisis. Circumstances throw them together with a common desire “to recover that exquisite feeling of knowing you are right where you belong, and that you can rest there because no one is trying to take it from you.” They had each known that kind of paradise at one point in their lives. “They’d each found it before without a map, and had to believe they could all find it again, the same way. Because there is no map to paradise. There is only the dream that such a place exists, as does the desire to possess it, and the determination to find it again when it’s been lost.”
Meissner’s skillful storytelling makes finding out whether Melanie, Eva, and June find paradise again a riveting and highly entertaining experience.
Excerpt from A Map to Paradise
1
The last thing Eva Kruse wanted to do was risk drawing attention to herself, and yet she’d done it anyway.
She’d stayed overnight at Melanie Cole’s house. Spent hour upon hour there instead of leaving at three in the afternoon as she usually did. Slept in the guest room bed as if an actual guest and not a paid-by-the-hour housekeeper who’d vowed to spend zero extra time at the actress’s house. Zero.
Yet there she stood, at daybreak in a borrowed nightgown.
When Melanie had told Eva she needed her to arrive that morning at six a.m. instead of nine, Eva had explained the best she could manage was a few minutes before eight. The two-bus commute from Los Angeles to Malibu was well over an hour. There was only one bus earlier than the one she picked up in Santa Monica, which still wouldn’t get her there in time.
“It’s just this once,” Melanie had pleaded, as though Eva had said instead that she didn’t want to start her workday when it was still dark. “I’ve an important call from the East Coast at seven thirty. I need my breakfast and a good pot of coffee and my dress ironed-even if no one is going to see me. I need to look and feel confident and poised, Eva. It’s an extremely important call. I need you to come at six. Please. Just this one time.”
“I am sorry, Miss Cole. The other bus does not come to my second stop until after seven.” Eva had enunciated each word carefully so that her accented English couldn’t be misunderstood.
She’d hoped the actress would call Marvelous Maids and at last, at last, ask for a different housekeeper-one who had a car or a husband who could drive or who lived closer or who had access to better bus routes. She was being paid at the top level for this posting-the most she’d been paid for any housekeeping job since arriving in America four years earlier. No one quits a plum posting without it raising questions. But if Melanie had asked for another maid, it would’ve solved all Eva’s problems.
The most pressing one, anyway. The one that often kept her up at night.
“Then just stay over tonight,” Melanie had said. “You’ll already be here when my alarm goes off in the morning, so you can make sure I get up. It’s a very important call.”
“I don’t know . . .” Eva’s mind had spun with possible excuses. Staying over was a bad idea if Melanie was being watched. It was probably a bad idea even if she wasn’t being watched. Sometimes Eva cried out in her sleep. And not in Polish.
“What don’t you know?” Melanie had asked, brows knitted. “Is it the money? I’ll pay you for the extra hours, even though you’re not going to be doing anything while you’re sleeping.”
“No, it is . . .” Eva’s voice had fallen away as words for the reason for her hesitancy fought to take shape in her mouth; a reason she had no intention of giving.
She shouldn’t be working for Melanie Cole, plain and simple. The Hollywood starlet had been suspected of communist ties six months earlier and been blacklisted. No studio, big or little, would hire her now. Melanie Cole didn’t need anyone in her orbit who might reinforce the idea that she wasn’t a patriot. The actress hadn’t been singled out; Eva knew that. There were plenty of other Hollywood people caught up in the long and ongoing hunt to rout out socialist sympathizers, including that famous actor Melanie had starred alongside and who was paying the rent on this house.
And who slept over when he was in town.
That film with heartthrob Carson Edwards had apparently been Melanie’s first important role, and audiences had adored her. This Eva had learned from her landlady, Yvonne. Eva herself hadn’t seen the movie. Fans and the tabloids had loved even more that Melanie and Carson were “an item,” but when he’d been named a suspected communist and summarily blacklisted, Melanie had been, too. Guilt by association. The adoration of the public had evaporated as quickly as morning dew. Yvonne had told her all of this, too.
Everything Melanie Cole was doing or had done was now being scrutinized. Or so Eva surmised.
An overnight stay would draw unwanted attention to both of them if anyone were in fact spying on Melanie, taking notes on who she spent time with. And if those government men poking into Melanie’s personal life pried next into Eva’s, they might discover she wasn’t, as she claimed, a displaced Pole who refused after the war to return to what was now communist Warsaw. They would discover who she really was and instantly assume the worst, because that’s what people did.
Eva would not only lose her job with the agency, but she’d likely be deported for having lied on her immigration papers. And Melanie? The actress would probably never work in Hollywood again, which was Melanie Cole’s worst nightmare. Eva had heard her talk about it with that screenwriter Elwood who lived next door. That man never came out of his house, but Eva had heard the actress talking with him-both through an open window and also on the telephone. Eva knew all Melanie Cole had ever wanted was to be a film actress. She had finally made it as one, and suddenly that life had been taken from her.
Melanie was no communist; Eva was certain of that, and she would know better than anyone. But she also knew it didn’t matter what a person said about themselves; it mattered only what others said about them.
Eva hadn’t learned of Melanie’s predicament until two months after she started working for her, and it wasn’t until a full month after that she came to understand Melanie’s associations-that is, who she spoke to, spent time with, had over to the house-were likely being scrutinized, too. People like her. Eva had known then she needed a different posting. Producing a good reason for asking for one was tricky, though. She had a highly desirable assignment. When she’d asked her supervisor, Lorraine, for a change due to the hour-long commute each day-a rather good excuse, she thought-she was told that Mr. Edwards had expressly chosen Eva. She was the preferred Marvelous Maid for Melanie Cole, and so she’d now be compensated for the two hours on the bus each day as well as for her bus fare.
Lorraine had beamed when she’d said this. No Marvelous Maid had ever earned the hourly rate while riding a bus to get to work, let alone been reimbursed for bus fare.
“I have extra nightgowns, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Melanie had added, her tone having warped from expectant to annoyed. “And it’s just one night. I really don’t think I’m asking too much, Eva. I will pay you the extra in cash. The agency doesn’t have to know.”
In the end Eva had agreed. It was just one night. There was at that moment no stray car on the cul-de-sac with a strange driver sitting inside it, peering at the house. And the extra money? If she was going to need to start over again with a new job, the extra money would sure help.
She’d slept fitfully in Melanie’s spacious guest room and risen before the sun to make the requested coffee and breakfast and to rouse the actress if she slept through her alarm.
But when Eva emerged from the guest room, the actress was already up. Melanie stood now in the dark at the slightly open sliding door that led to the back patio, smoking a cigarette.
“Oh! Good morning, ma’am,” Eva said, startled.
The actress turned to her. Dawn was only just beginning to steal across the sky, and the actress looked beautiful in the gleaming light of the still-visible moon. Melanie Cole had all the features a camera surely loved. Golden brown hair that fell in soft waves past her shoulders. Eyes the same verdigris green as meadow grass in springtime. Slender legs and a small waist and nicely proportioned everywhere else.
Even with her hair tousled and no cosmetics on her face, Melanie was stunning. Eva had the same build and nearly the same hair color, but she knew she was merely pleasant-looking.
“I couldn’t sleep,” the actress said, as though replying to a different comment than Eva’s morning greeting.
“I . . . Would you care for your coffee now, ma’am?” Eva asked.
“Can’t you just please call me Melanie? I feel like an old woman every time you call me ma’am. I’m only twenty-five.”
“Certainly, ma’am. I mean . . .”
“Melanie.”
“Yes. Melanie.”
Eva waited for an answer about the coffee, but there wasn’t one. Instead, the actress brought the cigarette to her lips as she turned back toward the glass doors. A dry breeze instead of the usual morning coastal mist was ruffling the sheer curtains. Melanie tipped her head back, drew in a breath, and then exhaled. Smoke swirled above her head and out the narrow opening at the door like a streamer made of gauze.
She pointed to the neighbor’s house with her cigarette. “Elwood’s sister-in-law is out there digging up his roses. Why in the world is she doing that?”
Eva fumbled for an answer. “You mean, so early in the morning?”
“No. I mean, why would June tear up his rose bushes? Elwood is very fond of them. He told me so. They’re not hers.”
“I . . . I don’t know, ma’am. I mean Melanie.”
“Come look.”
Eva closed the distance between them and looked out toward the neighbor’s backyard. The patio lights were on, and Eva could see the head and shoulders of Melanie’s neighbor, June Blankenship, just over the fence, bending out of view every few seconds as she drove a shovel into the ground. The woman lifted what appeared to be a rosebush, took a few paces, and then disappeared from sight as she bent forward with the bush and lowered it to the dirt.
“I think . . . I think she might be planting rose bushes,” Eva said. “Or moving them around maybe?”
Melanie shook her head. “Elwood is going to flip. He is very particular about those bushes. I don’t think she should be doing that.”
Eva didn’t know what to say to this. She’d never actually met the next-door neighbors, though Melanie had told her that the writer who lived there, Elwood Blankenship, had been in a bad accident some years back and now never came outside. His twin brother’s widow, June, lived with him and did his grocery shopping and laundry and all that. Eva also knew that when Melanie had been blacklisted and Carson Edwards moved her from Hollywood to Malibu to get her away from the press and prying eyes, she’d found a friend and unlikely confidant in Elwood Blankenship. Elwood was an accepted member of the Hollywood universe Melanie had been kicked out of, and therefore on good terms with all the people who now refused to hire her. He was additionally, near as Eva could tell, good at giving advice. She hadn’t meant to overhear their telephone or over-the-fence conversations, but Melanie wasn’t one to whisper. Especially when she was upset.
The last conversation Eva overheard had been a little over a week ago when she’d been in the backyard, shaking out a rug. Melanie was at the side of the house, talking with Elwood across the fence as he stood at an open window on his upper story. It would have been impossible not to hear them.
Melanie had been telling Elwood she’d gotten a letter from Washington laying out for her what the government’s expectations were if she wanted to prove her innocence.
“I’m not un-American!” Melanie had been shouting up to the window. “I was a Girl Scout, for heaven’s sake. I sang the National Anthem at my high school football games! I have done nothing wrong, Elwood. Ask anyone at the studio! Anyone.”
“But this isn’t about what you have done or not done, Melanie,” Elwood had said, his voice gliding down unhurriedly to Melanie’s side of the fence. Eva got the impression he didn’t often raise his voice. “It’s about who they think you are. And who you associate with.”
“You mean who I sleep with,” Melanie had shot back, and only slightly less loudly.
“Especially who you sleep with.” His voice had still been gentle.
“Even if Carson is a communist-” Melanie had begun, but Elwood cut her off.
“You should probably just assume for the moment that they know something about him that you don’t. I would.”
“Why? Why should I do that?”
“Because word gets around in Hollywood, especially in the writers’ circles, where there once were quite a number of Party members. And because you’re only on the list because he is.”
“But even if Carson is a communist, that doesn’t mean that I am one!”
“I think perhaps those men in Washington suspect that you’re not.”
“Then why is all of this happening to me?”
“They suppose, if you are guilty, that you must know a great many people who are communists. Because you are in an intimate relationship with one. And that must mean you sympathize with a communist and what he believes in. Communist sympathizers are as great a threat to national security as communists. Maybe worse. That’s how they see it.”
“That’s not what I am!”
“But this is what they see.”
“They are wrong!”
“I am inclined to agree with you. The problem is not that they are wrong but that they are in a position to make your life difficult because they think they’re right. They have power that you do not.”
Eva had stopped shaking the rug but was glued to the spot as she listened.
“So I should do nothing?” Melanie had sounded on the verge of tears. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“You can only do what is in your power to do, of course. That’s all any of us can do about anything. But you can begin to do something by adjusting what they see.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
“Well, for one thing, you can stop sleeping with a man they say is a communist.”
“But I don’t think-”
“They think he is. That’s what you need to remember.”
“He’s paying my rent.”
“And you don’t see that as an additional problem here?”
“I can’t afford this place without his help.”
Elwood had sighed. He’d sounded tired to Eva, very tired, and it had been only a little past ten in the morning.
“And he’s not even here right now,” Melanie added.
“But he’ll be back at some point, right? Don’t you have family in Nebraska?” Elwood had asked wearily but still kindly.
Excerpted from A Map to Paradise by Susan Meissner. Copyright © 2025 by Susan Meissner. Excerpted by permission of Berkley Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
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