Coast to Coast: A Family Romance

Nora Johnson was a young child when her parents'' marriage collapsed. Her father, Nunnally Johnson, the writer, producer, or director of many acclaimed movies, such as The Grapes of Wrath and The Dirty Dozen, remained in California, where he would continue to be a major Hollywood presence for more than three decades. Nora''s mother, Marion, a beautiful but unsettled woman, took her to New York to start a new life -- one surrounded by her mother''s lovers and eccentric literary friends instead of movie stars and studio heads.

Coast to Coast is Nora''s account of a childhood spent shuttling between Manhattan and Hollywood. What emerges is a marvelous portrait of American life in the 1940s and 1950s -- from the movie lots of California to the cocktail parties of the Upper East Side -- and also a touching story of a shrewd, observant girl who would grow up far too fast. Nora shares the colorful details of a childhood spent in privilege, but also captures the painful loneliness of changing schools, four-day train trips from one coast to the other, and never being quite sure of where she belonged. She also brings to life her droll, charming, talented father -- a Thurberesque character in Hollywood -- and her beautiful and erratic mother, a woman who fled the Los Angeles movie colony life but was unable to forget the husband who took her there.

Coast to Coast is a wonderfully written portrait of a fascinating era and a child who came of age in it, who had everything she wanted -- except a place to call home.

Nora Johnson was born in Hollywood, California, in 1933, the daughter of director/writer/producer Nunnally Johnson. Her parents divorced when she was a child, and she moved to New York City with her mother. She went to prep school and college in the East and spent summers in Beverly Hills. She has been a writer all her life; in 1958 her first novel, The World of Henry Orient, was a great success, and was subsequently made into a film starring Peter Sellers and Angela Lansbury, and a Broadway musical called Henry Sweet Henry. She has written novels and nonfiction books, as well as short fiction, articles, and essays for various periodicals, such as The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, McCall’s, The New York Times Book Review, and the Los Angeles Times. She’s been married twice, has three children, and has lived in Saudi Arabia, Larchmont (NY), and New York City, where she currently resides.