That lost mother turned out to be Lorna Moon, a newspaper-woman, screenwriter, and bestselling novelist, a woman who had been born in a small fishing village in Scotland but who had changed her name and built her career to become an exotic figure in the Hollywood of the silent film era. She lived about a mile from the house in which de Mille grew up and had a love affair with his uncle, William, that produced the infant boy who was adopted by Cecil and Constance in 1922.

De Mille recalls growing up in the rarefied air of privileged Hollywood with humor and insight, and offers rare, very human inside portraits of the people among whom he was raised. Immaculately researched and sensitively told, this is a story that is both memoir and mystery, with a serious sense of history and a charming sense of humor.