In a Town Called Paradox - Miriam Murcutt

"I wasn't looking for Marilyn Monroe when I bumped into her, even though I knew she was in town filming River of No Return..."

So begins In A Town Called Paradox - set in Utah, in the 1950s, when the Big Five Hollywood studios were lured to that state by the fiery red-rock scenery that formed the perfect backdrop to the blockbuster movies they planned to film.

Corin Dunbar - banished to live with her aunt Jessie, an obsessively religious spinster who runs a failing cattle ranch near Paradox - hates her new life, until the arrival of Hollywood turns the rural backwater into a playground for glamorous stars. Seduced by the glitz of the movies, Corin finds work with the studios, but after a brush with the casting couch, channels her growing ambition into saving the ranch-the jewel of the Dunbar family for three generations.

When Corin falls for Ark Stevenson - a charismatic stranger who was raised by missionaries in the Amazon jungle (then drawn to Paradox by his fascination with the Westerns that are filmed there) - her future seems bright. That's not the outlook facing Yiska Begay, a Navajo Indian and convicted murderer who's on the run near Paradox. These different lives unexpectedly collide when a tragic accident wrecks Corin's dreams and forces her to make an agonizing decision that changes the course of her life forever.

Told mainly by Corin-now a middle-aged woman still haunted by this watershed moment-In A Town Called Paradox is a compelling read that redefines the meaning of love as it asks the question: If each of us has a life story, then who decides how it unfolds - and how it should end?