How many lives does Jack have to blow before getting it right? And is sleeping with Marilyn Monroe worth getting murdered again? A time-travel noir that slips between the shimmering worlds of modern and midcentury Los Angeles. When Jack Cade is fired from a no-pay production of Hamlet, he has no inkling his next role will be opposite Marilyn Monroe - 40 years back in time, in 1956. As a down-and-out aging actor, Jack's luck and life change when he's anonymously sent a pawn ticket for an alexandrite ring. After his wife leaves him, a mysterious woman asks him to meet her at an old mansion deep in the San Fernando Valley. With nothing to lose, Jack decides to go. Once he steps through her door, he enters a world of beguiling physics and plain old magic to travel through time. Through a dark, glitzy whirlwind of events, Jack meets Marilyn, gets killed more than once, and emerges with the jewel that changes his destiny. He discovers the answers to all his life-and-death questions within the constantly shifting colors of the alexandrite.
