Welcome to Carson Springs

A Hollywood film crew upends life in an idyllic California village in this prequel to the Carson Springs trilogy

In the late 1950s, filmmakers descended on Carson Springs to shoot the movie that made this sleepy Spanish mission town famous. A plaque commemorates the filming of Stranger in Paradise, but nowhere does it mention Cora Delarosa, whose life changed forever when Hollywood arrived. Barely thirty, but married for over a decade, she does not realize that her marriage is falling apart until she meets the handsome and charming film director Hank Montgomery. In this novella, Eileen Goudge sets the stage for her Carson Springs trilogy, showing that in this small town, passion, heartache, and long-buried secrets have always been a way of life.