MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS, Anthony Marra’s second novel, is epic. In its telling of the WWII years of Maria Lagana’s life, the story moves between Hollywood and San Lorenzo (a small town in Italy housing political prisoners) and genuine heartbreak and laughter.

When she was a young teenager, Maria and her mother immigrated from Italy to their extended family in Lincoln Heights, California. Her father, Giuseppe, remained imprisoned in San Lorenzo due to a youthful error in judgment on Maria’s part that she believes is a secret. Her long letters to him are rich with details and information about family, America and love; his return letters are checkered with love and cut-outs from the censor’s brutal knife.

"Each page has surprises and details that you didn’t know were needed until you continue reading and find another piece that is just as pleasing and important."

Stifled by the old-world traditions of Italian women, namely great-aunts Mimi, Lala and Pep, Maria uses the chaos of wedding preparations for one of them to slip away, take a bus to Los Angeles and look for a job. Her interview with Art Feldman, Vice President and Head of Productions of Mercury Pictures, begins after she encounters him in his office. Artie is swiveling among four typewriters, each laden with copy, scripts and apologies, smoking three cigarettes and lamenting a recent casualty of the profession: an actor in a Western that they had just finished filming shot himself.

“My God,” Maria said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Losses,” Artie corrects. “It’ll be another ten grand to redo the ending. Frankly, this happens more often than I’d like to admit.”

Artie tells Maria that his employees have been killing themselves more and more. Not always with a gun. Sometimes with bows and arrows. Once with a tomahawk.

As Maria struggles to reconcile the physics of a self-inflicted tomahawk death, she almost loses sight of the prize: becoming a typist. Working in the movie industry. Foregoing dishwashing duties at the Trattoria Contadina. Leaving the crowded house in Lincoln Heights.

To convince Artie that she is more than the 18-year-old she presents, Maria uses her experience of writing to her imprisoned father and avoiding the censors. Artie sees a bright young woman who tolerates profanity and ambiguity, and he hires her immediately.

Maria meets Artie’s toupees, named after their personalities: The Heavyweight, The Casanova, The Optimist, The Edison, The Odysseus and The Mephistopheles. As far as she is concerned, the hairpieces are the same indistinguishable model and style, but Artie is convinced that “each one crackled with the karmic energy of the hair’s original head, unrealized and awaiting release.” He later bemoans the fact that his bald spot has outgrown them all, for the second time that year, and wonders when it will end. Maria’s comforting advice: “Life’s nasty and brutish but at least it’s short.”

Maria is sassy and able to capitalize on any situation, not unlike a young, Italian Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. Throughout the novel, this mostly honest relationship between Maria and Artie remains a constant source of energy, frustration and wildly varied successes.

Although she and her father are 4,000 miles apart, their love and connection appear at unexpected times. The San Lorenzens whose lives are marked by Mussolini and the war become part of her story, and the huge cast of emigrees who come to America for a better life and find Hollywood are incredibly important as well. Like a Rubik’s Cube that is twisted and turned and then clicked into satisfaction, the characters and pieces of the novel interlock, twist, surprise and then interlock again.

Did I mention the wit and understanding of human nature as well as a depth of cinematic history shown by Anthony Marra? Each page has surprises and details that you didn’t know were needed until you continue reading and find another piece that is just as pleasing and important. Click. Individually, these segments with stories and characters are delightful. Collectively, as put together in MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS, they feel perfect.

Read this book.