April 18, 1966 Santa Monica, California A starstruck young woman stands on the red carpet next to the greatest movie stars in the world-Hollywood royalty. It's the most important night of the year in Hollywood and she has just walked out of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium next to the idols of millions of people around the world. The red carpet is so crowded with stars on this cool night that she is pushed against the right arm of one of the superstars she dreams of marrying. She looks at all the beautiful women surrounding him, listens to the screaming of fans on the other side of the velvet ropes, and wonders how she'll be able to make this gorgeous actor fall in love with her at the glittering Beverly Hills party they are on their way to. How did a college girl who wanted to be a movie star attend Hollywood's ultimate glamour event, the Academy Awards(r), when-just three years before-she was a shy high school student living on an Illinois farm? Surrounded by those who could make her dream come true, she had phenomenal luck and good fortune in California. Why did she ignore these incredible opportunities? Trying to get as far away as she could from a devastating childhood and a shattered family, at seventeen she went to Los Angeles-all alone. She would not speak to her mother until six years had passed. During the next decades Candace Rose went from an elegant ballroom in Beverly Hills to carrying bedpans in hospital cancer wards, from the French Riviera to teaching elementary school, from idyllic Caribbean islands to near-disaster in a California mudslide, from a secluded Adirondack estate-remnant of a decimated family fortune-to an Arizona mobile home park. Courageous, extraordinary people and unforgettable places touch this powerful and adventure-filled memoir as a life takes twists and turns that a lonely dreamer never imagine