Proof of Progress (A Novel)

From the author of the Good Morning America Book Club pick Save What’s Left comes a witty and sharp-tongued novel about an actress whose manuscript is thirty-seven years overdue—and the life moments that led to its delay.

Maria Astorini, once popular character actress and late-night talk show darling, is having a moment. The B-list actress has survived deaths, divorces, a famous mother, a Hollywood blacklist, a string of public embarrassments, an aging face, financial ruin, an empty nest, a difficult best friend, and a worldwide pandemic. Now, she’s back and bigger than ever. A small, unexpected role has heightened her celebrity status and propelled her, at age sixty-five, into the limelight. And then, along comes the call Maria has spent decades avoiding. It’s her publisher asking, “Where is that book?”

Maria knows the world doesn’t need another celebrity memoir. To finally fulfill her contract, Maria writes, or attempts to write, or, at the very least, sends a pile of pages meant to vaguely resemble the book she promised to deliver nearly four decades earlier.

In a series of bite-sized anecdotes, she candidly recalls her past, chronicling the significant, and insignificant moments of her full, funny, and extraordinarily unpredictable life.

Maria hasn’t been able to write a book about her life—she’s been too busy living it.