I live in Chicago and visited Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle as a child and also took my children to see it. I was unaware of Moore’s stardom and her success as an investment advisor. Often when I read historical fiction that explores a historical figures life, I think that I would be better off reading a biography. Although I felt this away about this book, I feel like the fictionalization of her life made it a little more interesting.

My only disconnect with the book is that Doreen (Colleen’s fictional name) is telling her story through an interview with the museum narrating the details of the fairy castle. However in this interview she talks much more about her life than the fairy castle. Minor point but it didn’t hold true to me. ( )

From Dust to Stardust is a story that closely parallels the life of Colleen Moore, a well-known silent film actress, although author Kathleen Rooney tells readers that it is fiction and not a biography. At first, I was distracted by the fact that many characters were historical while some were not. Once I got past that, however, the book was very entertaining. Doreen O'Dare, the story's heroine, decided as a child that she was meant to be an actor, and what she wanted more than anything was to act in the new medium of motion pictures. Her uncle, an influential newspaper editor in Chicago who had done a favor for a movie producer, obtained an audition for Doreen; the rest was history. At the age of only fourteen, with her beloved grandmother as a chaperone, she traveled by train to the West Coast from her home in Florida and began acting in pictures. The story flew along, full of anecdotal snippets about the lives of many early silent film stars and other well-known figures of the time.
The novel is well-researched, and the author has a demonstrable affection for her subject. Like the author, I fell in love with Colleen Moore's fairy castle at a young age. Because of her love of the Castle, Kathleen Rooney became interested in Colleen Moore's life. Housed in the lower level of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, the castle is something everyone, not just those with young children, should visit. The museum itself is fabulous, a wonderful experience and education for all ages.
One additional note of interest from the Afterword: the movie A Star Is Born was based on a screenplay and film written by a close friend of Colleen Moore (although uncredited) about Colleen's marriage.
Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the ARC of this novel. ( )

You could hand over a dime and purchase a dream.
From Dust to Stardust by Kathleen Rooney

Fans of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk–and you are legion–will love Kathleen Rooney’s new novel From Dust to Stardust.

In the early days of the movies, a young girl follows her dreams and goes to Hollywood. Renamed Doreen O’Dare, stereotypically Irish, she works her way to fame. After a few years, knowing how Lillian Gish was forever typecast as a long -locked girl even as she aged, Doreen throws over her long curls for a bob and goody girl roles for flappers, predating Clara Bow who becomes famous as the vampish “It” girl.

Doreen finds a life-long forbidden love, and marries a handsome man with a fatal weakness for alcohol. But her rock is her family and Irish grandmother with her enchanting fairy stories.

Doreen is surrounded by famous actresses: Lillian Gish, dedicated to her craft and untouched by Hollywood excess; Marion Davies, a natural comedian forced into serious roles by her lover W. R. Hearst; the teenaged lover of Charlie Chaplin, Mildred Harris; Clara Bow, beautiful and tough.

When talking pictures come, everything changes. The studios give the actresses elocution lessons, but also winnow many out.

Stardust is still dust. After a while you want to brush it off.
From Dust to Stardust by Kathleen Rooney

Doreen’s Cinderella life turned out to be hard work, taking its toil on her health and her marriage.

Doreen had another life-long passion–collecting miniatures. She turned the doll house her father built her into a splendid fairy palace, using her jewels and the finest materials. It had miniature books signed by famous writers and diamond chandeliers.

During the Depression, Doreen took the house on the road to raise money for children’s charities. She donated it to a Chicago museum, and now in her later sixties, she is being interviewed about the doll house and her life, remembering all the stardust and dust of fame and love and loss, and the life that came after.

We read of a Hollywood run by “a pack of children, or at least by the childlike: “those who had not yet lost the capacity for wonder, who could dream during the daytime, who refused to draw a line between what was real and what was possible.” There are rivals and women who support each other, men who prey on the actresses and husbands who are unfaithful.

Inspired by the life of an early film star, Colleen Moore, who created the Fairy Castle that enchanted Rooney as a girl, the novel transports us back to Hollywood of a hundred years ago.

In the Author’s Note, I was happy to find a list of movies talked about in the book that are available to watch.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. ( )