Recorded January 12, 2022
Author Deborah Goodrich Royce will discuss her second novel, Ruby Falls, a thrilling and twisty homage to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
On a brilliantly sunny July day, six-year-old Ruby is abandoned by her father in the suffocating dark of a Tennessee cave. Twenty years later, transformed into soap opera star Eleanor Russell, she is fired under dubious circumstances. Fleeing to Europe, she marries a glamorous stranger named Orlando Montague and keeps her past closely hidden.
Together, Eleanor and Orlando start afresh in LA. Setting up house in a storybook cottage in the Hollywood Hills, Eleanor is cast in a dream role—the lead in a remake of Rebecca. As she immerses herself in that eerie gothic tale, Orlando’s personality changes, ghosts of her past re-emerge, and Eleanor fears she is not the only person in her marriage with a secret.
In this thrilling and twisty homage to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, the story ricochets through the streets of Los Angeles, a dangerous marriage to an exotic stranger, and the mind of a young woman whose past may not release her.
Deborah Goodrich Royce’s first novel, Finding Mrs. Ford, debuted in 2019 to rave reviews. She divides her time between the Northeast and Florida, where she writes, reads, watches lots of movies, and spends time with her family.
Deborah serves on the governing and/or advisory boards of the Avon Theatre, the American Film Institute, New York Botanical Garden, the Greenwich International Film Festival, the Greenwich Historical Society, the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, the Preservation Society of Newport, and the PRASAD Project. She and her husband have restored more buildings than she can count, including the Ocean House Hotel and the Deer Mountain Inn.
Deborah holds a BA in French and Italian from Lake Erie College and an honorary doctorate from the same institution. In an earlier life, she was an actress in film and television and a story editor at Miramax Films. Ruby Falls is her second psychological thriller, and she owes a debt of gratitude for its inspiration to Daphne du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock.
Florida Voices in generously supported by the Fred J. Brotherton Endowment for Literature, established at The Four Arts by the Fred J. Brotherton Charitable Foundation. Fred Brotherton, who died in 2003, was for many years a Benefactor of The Four Arts and a strong supporter of its programs. Florida Voices, featuring the state that was Mr. Brotherton’s winter home, serves as a continuing memorial to this much-respected member of The Four Arts.