The story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and resurfaces 50 years later in contemporary Hollywood is an “absolute masterpiece” according to Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, BEAUTIFUL RUINS is a novel full of flawed yet utterly relatable people, all of them reaching toward some impossible goal, leading us up a rocky shoreline path toward a future both distant and utterly familiar.