No Good-byes - Couverture souple

At 12, Chassi Jennings witnessed the tragic death of her mother, Academy Award-winning actress Sally Brash. Now 25 and a box-office star in her own right, Chassi is about to re-create her mother's signature role in a remake of No Trumpets, No Drums. But as filming approaches, Chassi finds herself plagued by dizzy spells and is sent to psychotherapist Eleanor Costello for help.

As Eleanor quietly leads Chassi to confront her memories and grief, she, too, begins to face deeply buried sorrows -- her husband's death and her estrangementfrom her only daughter. And between their sessions is Ionie St. John, a waitress who serves Chassi lattes at the local Cuppa Joe downstairs. An aspiring actress, Ionie, too, is a woman with ambitions and secrets of her own.

In this intricately woven story of mothers and daughters, loss and reconciliation, the lives of these three women overlap as they search for their true selves and for those they've lost.

Elaine Kagan is an actress and writer who has appeared in films and television series, including Traffic, Goodfellas, Absolute Power, ER, and Alias. She is the author of four previous, critically praised novels, The Girls, Blue Heaven, Somebody's Baby, and No Good-Byes. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is currently at work on her next novel and a screenplay.