The Newnan Carnegie Library Foundation is proud to welcome bestselling author Lynn Cullen to Newnan to discuss her new book, When We Were Brilliant. They were an unlikely pair—a blond bombshell and a photographer determined to be taken seriously—but Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold would make a deal that would change their lives in this dazzling new novel.

Books will be available for purchase by Bookmiser. The book talk will be followed by a book signing. Registration is requested.

About the Author: Lynn Cullen is the national bestselling author of historical novels The Woman with the Cure, Mrs. Poe, The Sisters of Summit Avenue, Twain’s End, The Creation of Eve, Reign of Madness, and I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter.

About the book: In 1952, Norma Jeane Baker follows documentary photographer Eve Arnold into a powder room on the night they first meet. She has a proposition for her. Norma Jeane created Marilyn Monroe to be photographed, and she wants Eve to do it. Eve is better than anyone she’s seen at capturing a person’s inner truth. Together they can help each other. Together, she says, they can make something brilliant.

Skeptical of this cipher of a young woman, Eve demurs. She’s looking for more serious subjects than this ambitious starlet. But she keeps getting drawn back into Marilyn’s orbit, and the women come to recognize something in each other—something fundamental. Nothing will get in the way of what they want, and when Marilyn’s star takes off to teetering heights, neither will ever be the same.

A lavish and transporting novel, When We Were Brilliant captures the halcyon days of an icon and the grit of women determining their own futures as it explores the exceptional and complicated friendship between Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold.

Lynn Cullen: Edgar B. Hollis Distinguished Author Series