The Scorns of Time traces the life of Elsinora Dean Harding, an actress who, during the Golden Age of cinema, commanded both stage and screen with a singular artistic intelligence, luminous beauty, and self-possessed elegance. Her ascent to renown surprises no one who witnessed her work, which only deepens the enigma of her sudden withdrawal from performance and public view at the height of her career. Now an older, still formidable woman, Elsinora directs her powers of concentration toward uncovering a mystery in her past that has unsettled her for decades. She returns to her precocious childhood, her years in the theater and on film sets, her erotic entanglements, and family losses in order to confront the concealed event that lies at the center of her life story. Surprise encounters with characters from the past spur Elsinora's progress and upend her composed state of affairs. Spanning continents and decades-from World War II-era middle America to European battlefields to Hollywood and Broadway during their heyday-The Scorns of Time is at once a novel of suspense, a meditation on mortality, and a psychologically exacting exploration of memory, regret, and retribution. Inventively structured, wittily told, and peopled with sharply realized, unforgettable characters, The Scorns of Time is a work of lasting distinction.