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Norma Jeane's Wishes in Time:
In the year 2040, the United States no longer exists. Instead, it's a province of the former Soviet Union, which has been restored to its past glory. And each newborn child is assigned a Designation Number instead of a name.Now, forty years later, a man known only as 77241 escapes into the past in an effort to discover where the world went wrong. When 77241 comes upon footage of Norma Jeane Baker, known throughout the world as Marilyn Monroe, he becomes haunted by her face, so much so that he seeks out her gravesite and begins speaking to her hologram.As oxygen bombs fall upon the former United States in a final act of destruction, 77241 escapes in a time bubble traveling back to June 1960. Once there, he seeks out Norma Jeane at a movie set. Through her, he attempts to save John F. Kennedy from his all-too-early demise hoping to alter enough of the past to change the world's future destruction.Join 77241 and Norma Jeane as they interact with a cast of historical characters, including Kennedy, Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln, as they seek to change the course of history in Norma Jeane's Wishes in Time.
516 pages, Paperback
First published September 8, 2008
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May 15, 2010
Review by Tara Hanks, Author of "The Mmm Girl" and "Wicked Baby"
“I always had too many fantasies to be just a housewife,” Marilyn Monroe once said. “I guess I am a fantasy.” Little did she know how many of us would share that fantasy, even fifty years after her death. Monroe has been the subject of many biographies, some more fanciful than real, and also a few works of honest fiction. Her image is indelibly marked on our collective consciousness.
Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time began as a short story, and was later expanded into a full-length novel. As the title indicates, author Stuart P. Coates is fascinated not just by the Marilyn Monroe of screen legend, but the woman who created her – Norma Jeane Mortenson. We all know Marilyn, or think we do – but who was Norma Jeane, and was she very different?
Our perceptions of Monroe are often clouded by what we know of her life – her unhappy childhood, failed marriages, struggles with depression and addiction, and her sudden death at just 36 years old. By using the narrative of science fiction, Coates approaches his heroine from a new angle.
The story begins a century after Marilyn Monroe’s lifetime, in 2079. America’s economy has long since collapsed, and the former USA is now part of a relaunched Soviet Union. All newborn children are assigned Designation Numbers, instead of names. It is here that we meet Coates’ other main protagonist, a young man known only as ‘77241’.
The first sightings of Monroe come from her movies, and 7 is bemused at this now-antiquated medium. Determined to change the course of our history, 7 boards a ‘time bubble’, and while planning to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the world’s subsequent decline, crashes into the Nevada desert of 1960, where Marilyn Monroe is filming The Misfits.
A lonely, disaffected Monroe confides in the stranger, but is alarmed when he talks of the president’s future murder. She leaves the desert and joins 7 in the Time Bubble, renaming him ‘Adam’.
Along the way, Norma Jeane/Marilyn encounters several other famous personalities, the heroes and villains of history. There is a vibrant scene where Marilyn meets her younger self, auditioning for a modeling agency. The lively, spirited Norma Jeane mocks her older, weary counterpart. This leads to further self-examination for Marilyn, and with Adam’s help, she beats her debilitating addiction to sleeping pills.
Later on, Marilyn travels alone to meet her own idol, Abraham Lincoln, and tries to stop his assassination. In saving Lincoln, Marilyn wipes out her own existence, and future chances of happiness. So she must turn back time, and in doing so, meets Samuel Clemens (better known as the writer, Mark Twain), and her own great-grandmother, Jennie Nance, who is then just eight years old, a recent immigrant from Scotland.
Their steam-train journey from Washington to San Francisco contains some of the funniest scenes in the novel. By using a non-celebrity, Jennie, and contrasting her with Twain and Monroe, Coates makes his trip through American history easier for readers to connect with.
Finally Marilyn, Twain and Jennie travel into the distant future to save Adam, and humanity, from the sinister Dr Blight (aka Jack The Ripper.) The struggle between the ultimate sex goddess and the deadly misogynist create an almost feminist twist as the story draws to a close.
Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time has some of the flaws of a first novel – the dialogue could be cut down, the action is sometimes over-explained. Some of the minor characters are sketched rather than finely detailed. But these are small quibbles and the book should be enjoyed for what it is, not what it was never intended to be. This is no lofty literary tome, but a loving tribute from a fan, to be enjoyed by other fans.
Additionally, Coates diverges from other Monroe-inspired fictions. Significantly, he depicts Marilyn Monroe not as a victim or sex object, but an endearing and complex woman. Yes, she has her knight in shining armour (Adam) - but this Cinderella has the power to redeem herself, and others too.
Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time is an entertaining curiosity, offering us a chance to join Marilyn, Adam and the rest and escape our troubles for a while. It has a nostalgic appeal, reviving a brand of optimism that has long been associated with the American Dream. Marilyn Monroe, as portrayed here, is a shining example of the quintessential, plucky American heroine.
“In this time,” Coates writes (as Adam), “some often liken you to a goddess. True, you were the last and greatest of the Hollywood goddesses; but if you recall, those gods and goddesses desired to acquire human traits, such as love, hate, desire and compassion. You came at it from the other direction…a person who held onto your humanity no matter how famous or big a star you became.”
This quotation expresses how the contradictions in Marilyn could not only co-exist but even thrive, despite the tragedy of her life. The goddess and the girl-next-door, victim and survivor – the duality of Norma Jeane/Marilyn is the key to her continuing popularity, and she is still an icon even in our own complicated times.
Tara Hanks, Author of "The Mmm Girl" and "Wicked Baby"
For more information regarding "The Mmm Girl" and "Wicked Baby" please visit:
http://www.tarahanks.org
Review by David Marshall, President of the Forever Marilyn Fan Club
Norma Jeane’s Wishes in Time
By Stuart P. Coates
2008 iUniverse
ISBN 9780595493104
When an author chooses a famous figure as the focus of their work their personal reaction to that figure is often easy to determine. This has certainly been the case when that famous figure is Marilyn Monroe. Norman Mailer’s work, for example, leaves an aftertaste of the jilted lover, praising his subject at times but filling the space between the lines with a subtle condescension. Norman Rosten’s work has a shade of melancholy, leaving the reader with no doubt of how his subject touched his own life and much her passing is regretted. While both Susan Strasberg and Arthur Miller wrote of a woman they obviously loved, a sense of personal resentment as well as guilt permeates their work to the point that one cannot help but feel their books were as much an act of exorcism as memoir. Gloria Steinem approached her subject as a fellow activist, if misunderstood, on the path to sisterhood while Sam Shaw and George Barris write simply of a friend whose company is sorely missed.
In recent years another viewpoint has been added, that of the writer who while never having met Monroe, brings to the picture an equal amount of admiration as well as an understanding of the woman behind the glamorous exterior, an emphasis on the Norma Jeane portion of Marilyn’s complex personality. This was certainly the case in Tara Hanks’ The Mmm Girl as well as Michelle Morgan’s Private and Undisclosed, both of which added the unexplored perspective of how the legend is regarded outside Monroe’s native country. Author Stuart Coates, like Hanks and Morgan, writes from a perspective outside of the United States but his Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time is perhaps the most American take on Monroe to reach print in a good many years. Above all is the fact that the author not only obviously reveres his subject but has been deeply emotionally touched by her life and story. This was most evident in his 2007 speech in the Westwood Memorial Chapel at the forty-fifth annual memorial service and that love and respect for his deceased subject is one of the reasons why his book should be so thoroughly enjoyed by Monroe’s fans.
But Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time provides the ardent fan looking for yet another Marilyn book far more than love and respect. What this book does is grant the fan’s most ardent wish – that Marilyn could appear in something new, a new role, a new adventure for our entertainment so that we can sit back and simply enjoy what endeared her to us in the first place. And just as if a brand new, widescreen, super Technicolor extravaganza starring none other than our very favorite star, Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time explodes with page after page of yet another stellar performance by Monroe. Granted it all takes place not on the screen but in the reader’s imagination, that performance is still one of Monroe’s best, for here she is playing not Arthur Miller’s Roslyn or Billy Wilder’s Sugar but Marilyn herself – better yet, Norma Jeane as seen through the eyes of someone who has studied her life just as carefully as her character. The odd thing is that while a far better known writer, Norman Mailer, once attempted to put words in Marilyn’s mouth and, at least in my opinion, botched the job, first time novelist Coates has Marilyn speaking on nearly every page and not once does he hit a wrong note. The book truly does read as if Marilyn has popped up out of a time machine and speaks her own mind in her own words.
As most of the book’s readers will know, the four adventures Marilyn takes part in were originally written as short stories shared among fellow online fans. And while those stories were fun, they were still something one read in an email format with all the restrictions and inconvenience of being words on a computer screen. To have these same stories transformed into the format of a physical book considerably alters the experience, much for the better. But even if you had read all four of these adventures online, be prepared for a brand new experience with the book. Coates, conscious of the new format of the written word upon a page rather than on a screen, has considerably enhanced his work, each story having undergone extensive editing, and more importantly, extensive expansion. The narrative has been opened up, dialog honed and added, whole new sequences written. Overall the book has only a faint trace of the original experience of reading it online. Somehow physically holding the book, snuggling down in your couch or bed rather than at your computer to read, alters everything. If this were a movie surely one of the taglines would be “Bigger and Better Than Ever!”
The overall experience is so – no other word – fun. And isn’t that one of the greatest things about Marilyn, that she is simply so much fun to watch? But this isn’t just Pola walking into walls or Sugar shimmying with her ukulele – this is Marilyn Monroe, the person outside of a script’s direction, reacting to adventures only Indiana Jones might be expected to engage in. In fact, the engaging concept here is less Indiana Jones and more Pearl White, the sort of death-defying feats that the old 1930s matinee serials employed and kept kids coming back to the theaters every Saturday afternoon to see just how their hero was going to get out of last week’s cliffhanger. And talk about cliffhangers – speeding trains veering out of control, assassinations looming where only our heroine can step in and alter history, zooming dangerously through the time/space continuum while Krakatoa blows sky high.
And while the story may owe more than a bit to plot devices used for such movies as the Terminator series, (i.e. history must be altered or else the entire planet is going to be wiped out), Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time surpasses the cliché by placing someone we know and love in the middle of this race against time, and never once allowing her a false step or word no matter how alien the surroundings or situation may be to the 20th century icon. What’s more is that the well-known icon is joined by others equally famous: Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Jack the Ripper, Jack and Bobby Kennedy. There’s another revelation for the reader – Stuart Coates not only has done his homework on the life of Marilyn Monroe, he has applied equal scholarship to all the other historical figures appearing in cameo roles throughout the book. The result is not only a rollercoaster ride through time but an understated understanding of history itself where motivation and action is often propelled as much by personality as plotline.
Personally, science fiction has never been a genre I have been able to enjoy or appreciate. Some people might be looking for a serious study of the actress’s life or a psychological profile of a woman who is no doubt as historical a figure as the others who populate these pages. But the kick is that somehow Stuart Coates is able to hook you in, one of the very first things a seasoned writer must be able to do, simply by creating a fun and rollicking story. You may think you’re above such things, dismissing them as simple entertainment but hey, what’s wrong with simple entertainment? If this were a movie rather than a book would one of us hesitate for a heartbeat to be first in line to see it? I wouldn’t care if Marilyn Monroe were to suddenly reappear in a new production of Forbidden Planet or King Lear – I’d be there waiting in line at dawn. So just because this is the written word rather than up there on the good old silver screen, the bottom-line is Marilyn Monroe is appearing in a new role and while Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time is no Misfits, let alone Shakespeare, it’s a heck of a lot of fun and that, I think anyway, is one of the reasons Marilyn is so addicting for really, what’s wrong with fun?
David.
Review by Danamo, President of the Norma2Marilyn Fan Club
This isn't another biography, conspiracy theory, or photo book. It's an action and adventure science fiction novel, starring Norma Jeane/Marilyn as the main character. I think it would make a great movie!
Marilyn, while filming in the Nevada desert on the set of The Misfits, gets caught up in an exciting time travel adventure that puts her with Mark Twain on a train in the Wild West, as a spy in Nazi Germany, and to a grim future which only she can prevent. Along the way she meets up with a lot of interesting historical characters including Adolph Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, and Jack The Ripper, as well as people from her own past such as her great grandmother Jennie Nance, her first husband, Jim Dougherty, and even herself before she changed her name to Marilyn.
Speaking as a sci-fi buff, and also as President of a Marilyn fan club, I think this book, NJWIT, has appeal for both general science fiction readers and for Marilyn fans.
It's a good sci-fi yarn, and historical novel, with plenty of action and suspense, but it also deals accurately and with a well-informed fan's respectful insight into Marilyn's life and character.
Marilyn is no timid, dumb blonde in this story. She starts out with uncertainty, dealing with her personal issues, but evolves into a kick-ass almost super hero finding the strength in herself to fight villains at the scenes of cataclysmic events in history.
All along the way she is herself - both of herselves: Her persona as Marilyn and the Norma Jeane within. Stuart's study of Marilyn's life and personalities is a study of love and brings a depth to his portraiture of Marilyn which her fans will recognize and general readers may appreciate for the first time.
Having piled all this glowing praise on Norma Jeane's Wishes in Time, I do also have a cautionary note to add. This is a big book, with 500+ pages in hardback, a lot of detail, observation, and commentary. So it's not a quick read. But it's definitely worth the effort.
I recommend it to everyone who likes books with science fiction, action and adventure, history, and Marilyn Monroe.
Danamo
President, NJ2MM
“I always had too many fantasies to be just a housewife,” Marilyn Monroe once said. “I guess I am a fantasy.” Little did she know how many of us would share that fantasy, even fifty years after her death. Monroe has been the subject of many biographies, some more fanciful than real, and also a few works of honest fiction. Her image is indelibly marked on our collective consciousness.
Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time began as a short story, and was later expanded into a full-length novel. As the title indicates, author Stuart P. Coates is fascinated not just by the Marilyn Monroe of screen legend, but the woman who created her – Norma Jeane Mortenson. We all know Marilyn, or think we do – but who was Norma Jeane, and was she very different?
Our perceptions of Monroe are often clouded by what we know of her life – her unhappy childhood, failed marriages, struggles with depression and addiction, and her sudden death at just 36 years old. By using the narrative of science fiction, Coates approaches his heroine from a new angle.
The story begins a century after Marilyn Monroe’s lifetime, in 2079. America’s economy has long since collapsed, and the former USA is now part of a relaunched Soviet Union. All newborn children are assigned Designation Numbers, instead of names. It is here that we meet Coates’ other main protagonist, a young man known only as ‘77241’.
The first sightings of Monroe come from her movies, and 7 is bemused at this now-antiquated medium. Determined to change the course of our history, 7 boards a ‘time bubble’, and while planning to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the world’s subsequent decline, crashes into the Nevada desert of 1960, where Marilyn Monroe is filming The Misfits.
A lonely, disaffected Monroe confides in the stranger, but is alarmed when he talks of the president’s future murder. She leaves the desert and joins 7 in the Time Bubble, renaming him ‘Adam’.
Along the way, Norma Jeane/Marilyn encounters several other famous personalities, the heroes and villains of history. There is a vibrant scene where Marilyn meets her younger self, auditioning for a modeling agency. The lively, spirited Norma Jeane mocks her older, weary counterpart. This leads to further self-examination for Marilyn, and with Adam’s help, she beats her debilitating addiction to sleeping pills.
Later on, Marilyn travels alone to meet her own idol, Abraham Lincoln, and tries to stop his assassination. In saving Lincoln, Marilyn wipes out her own existence, and future chances of happiness. So she must turn back time, and in doing so, meets Samuel Clemens (better known as the writer, Mark Twain), and her own great-grandmother, Jennie Nance, who is then just eight years old, a recent immigrant from Scotland.
Their steam-train journey from Washington to San Francisco contains some of the funniest scenes in the novel. By using a non-celebrity, Jennie, and contrasting her with Twain and Monroe, Coates makes his trip through American history easier for readers to connect with.
Finally Marilyn, Twain and Jennie travel into the distant future to save Adam, and humanity, from the sinister Dr Blight (aka Jack The Ripper.) The struggle between the ultimate sex goddess and the deadly misogynist create an almost feminist twist as the story draws to a close.
Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time has some of the flaws of a first novel – the dialogue could be cut down, the action is sometimes over-explained. Some of the minor characters are sketched rather than finely detailed. But these are small quibbles and the book should be enjoyed for what it is, not what it was never intended to be. This is no lofty literary tome, but a loving tribute from a fan, to be enjoyed by other fans.
Additionally, Coates diverges from other Monroe-inspired fictions. Significantly, he depicts Marilyn Monroe not as a victim or sex object, but an endearing and complex woman. Yes, she has her knight in shining armour (Adam) - but this Cinderella has the power to redeem herself, and others too.
Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time is an entertaining curiosity, offering us a chance to join Marilyn, Adam and the rest and escape our troubles for a while. It has a nostalgic appeal, reviving a brand of optimism that has long been associated with the American Dream. Marilyn Monroe, as portrayed here, is a shining example of the quintessential, plucky American heroine.
“In this time,” Coates writes (as Adam), “some often liken you to a goddess. True, you were the last and greatest of the Hollywood goddesses; but if you recall, those gods and goddesses desired to acquire human traits, such as love, hate, desire and compassion. You came at it from the other direction…a person who held onto your humanity no matter how famous or big a star you became.”
This quotation expresses how the contradictions in Marilyn could not only co-exist but even thrive, despite the tragedy of her life. The goddess and the girl-next-door, victim and survivor – the duality of Norma Jeane/Marilyn is the key to her continuing popularity, and she is still an icon even in our own complicated times.
Tara Hanks, Author of "The Mmm Girl" and "Wicked Baby"
For more information regarding "The Mmm Girl" and "Wicked Baby" please visit:
http://www.tarahanks.org
Review by David Marshall, President of the Forever Marilyn Fan Club
Norma Jeane’s Wishes in Time
By Stuart P. Coates
2008 iUniverse
ISBN 9780595493104
When an author chooses a famous figure as the focus of their work their personal reaction to that figure is often easy to determine. This has certainly been the case when that famous figure is Marilyn Monroe. Norman Mailer’s work, for example, leaves an aftertaste of the jilted lover, praising his subject at times but filling the space between the lines with a subtle condescension. Norman Rosten’s work has a shade of melancholy, leaving the reader with no doubt of how his subject touched his own life and much her passing is regretted. While both Susan Strasberg and Arthur Miller wrote of a woman they obviously loved, a sense of personal resentment as well as guilt permeates their work to the point that one cannot help but feel their books were as much an act of exorcism as memoir. Gloria Steinem approached her subject as a fellow activist, if misunderstood, on the path to sisterhood while Sam Shaw and George Barris write simply of a friend whose company is sorely missed.
In recent years another viewpoint has been added, that of the writer who while never having met Monroe, brings to the picture an equal amount of admiration as well as an understanding of the woman behind the glamorous exterior, an emphasis on the Norma Jeane portion of Marilyn’s complex personality. This was certainly the case in Tara Hanks’ The Mmm Girl as well as Michelle Morgan’s Private and Undisclosed, both of which added the unexplored perspective of how the legend is regarded outside Monroe’s native country. Author Stuart Coates, like Hanks and Morgan, writes from a perspective outside of the United States but his Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time is perhaps the most American take on Monroe to reach print in a good many years. Above all is the fact that the author not only obviously reveres his subject but has been deeply emotionally touched by her life and story. This was most evident in his 2007 speech in the Westwood Memorial Chapel at the forty-fifth annual memorial service and that love and respect for his deceased subject is one of the reasons why his book should be so thoroughly enjoyed by Monroe’s fans.
But Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time provides the ardent fan looking for yet another Marilyn book far more than love and respect. What this book does is grant the fan’s most ardent wish – that Marilyn could appear in something new, a new role, a new adventure for our entertainment so that we can sit back and simply enjoy what endeared her to us in the first place. And just as if a brand new, widescreen, super Technicolor extravaganza starring none other than our very favorite star, Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time explodes with page after page of yet another stellar performance by Monroe. Granted it all takes place not on the screen but in the reader’s imagination, that performance is still one of Monroe’s best, for here she is playing not Arthur Miller’s Roslyn or Billy Wilder’s Sugar but Marilyn herself – better yet, Norma Jeane as seen through the eyes of someone who has studied her life just as carefully as her character. The odd thing is that while a far better known writer, Norman Mailer, once attempted to put words in Marilyn’s mouth and, at least in my opinion, botched the job, first time novelist Coates has Marilyn speaking on nearly every page and not once does he hit a wrong note. The book truly does read as if Marilyn has popped up out of a time machine and speaks her own mind in her own words.
As most of the book’s readers will know, the four adventures Marilyn takes part in were originally written as short stories shared among fellow online fans. And while those stories were fun, they were still something one read in an email format with all the restrictions and inconvenience of being words on a computer screen. To have these same stories transformed into the format of a physical book considerably alters the experience, much for the better. But even if you had read all four of these adventures online, be prepared for a brand new experience with the book. Coates, conscious of the new format of the written word upon a page rather than on a screen, has considerably enhanced his work, each story having undergone extensive editing, and more importantly, extensive expansion. The narrative has been opened up, dialog honed and added, whole new sequences written. Overall the book has only a faint trace of the original experience of reading it online. Somehow physically holding the book, snuggling down in your couch or bed rather than at your computer to read, alters everything. If this were a movie surely one of the taglines would be “Bigger and Better Than Ever!”
The overall experience is so – no other word – fun. And isn’t that one of the greatest things about Marilyn, that she is simply so much fun to watch? But this isn’t just Pola walking into walls or Sugar shimmying with her ukulele – this is Marilyn Monroe, the person outside of a script’s direction, reacting to adventures only Indiana Jones might be expected to engage in. In fact, the engaging concept here is less Indiana Jones and more Pearl White, the sort of death-defying feats that the old 1930s matinee serials employed and kept kids coming back to the theaters every Saturday afternoon to see just how their hero was going to get out of last week’s cliffhanger. And talk about cliffhangers – speeding trains veering out of control, assassinations looming where only our heroine can step in and alter history, zooming dangerously through the time/space continuum while Krakatoa blows sky high.
And while the story may owe more than a bit to plot devices used for such movies as the Terminator series, (i.e. history must be altered or else the entire planet is going to be wiped out), Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time surpasses the cliché by placing someone we know and love in the middle of this race against time, and never once allowing her a false step or word no matter how alien the surroundings or situation may be to the 20th century icon. What’s more is that the well-known icon is joined by others equally famous: Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Jack the Ripper, Jack and Bobby Kennedy. There’s another revelation for the reader – Stuart Coates not only has done his homework on the life of Marilyn Monroe, he has applied equal scholarship to all the other historical figures appearing in cameo roles throughout the book. The result is not only a rollercoaster ride through time but an understated understanding of history itself where motivation and action is often propelled as much by personality as plotline.
Personally, science fiction has never been a genre I have been able to enjoy or appreciate. Some people might be looking for a serious study of the actress’s life or a psychological profile of a woman who is no doubt as historical a figure as the others who populate these pages. But the kick is that somehow Stuart Coates is able to hook you in, one of the very first things a seasoned writer must be able to do, simply by creating a fun and rollicking story. You may think you’re above such things, dismissing them as simple entertainment but hey, what’s wrong with simple entertainment? If this were a movie rather than a book would one of us hesitate for a heartbeat to be first in line to see it? I wouldn’t care if Marilyn Monroe were to suddenly reappear in a new production of Forbidden Planet or King Lear – I’d be there waiting in line at dawn. So just because this is the written word rather than up there on the good old silver screen, the bottom-line is Marilyn Monroe is appearing in a new role and while Norma Jeane’s Wishes In Time is no Misfits, let alone Shakespeare, it’s a heck of a lot of fun and that, I think anyway, is one of the reasons Marilyn is so addicting for really, what’s wrong with fun?
David.
Review by Danamo, President of the Norma2Marilyn Fan Club
This isn't another biography, conspiracy theory, or photo book. It's an action and adventure science fiction novel, starring Norma Jeane/Marilyn as the main character. I think it would make a great movie!
Marilyn, while filming in the Nevada desert on the set of The Misfits, gets caught up in an exciting time travel adventure that puts her with Mark Twain on a train in the Wild West, as a spy in Nazi Germany, and to a grim future which only she can prevent. Along the way she meets up with a lot of interesting historical characters including Adolph Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, and Jack The Ripper, as well as people from her own past such as her great grandmother Jennie Nance, her first husband, Jim Dougherty, and even herself before she changed her name to Marilyn.
Speaking as a sci-fi buff, and also as President of a Marilyn fan club, I think this book, NJWIT, has appeal for both general science fiction readers and for Marilyn fans.
It's a good sci-fi yarn, and historical novel, with plenty of action and suspense, but it also deals accurately and with a well-informed fan's respectful insight into Marilyn's life and character.
Marilyn is no timid, dumb blonde in this story. She starts out with uncertainty, dealing with her personal issues, but evolves into a kick-ass almost super hero finding the strength in herself to fight villains at the scenes of cataclysmic events in history.
All along the way she is herself - both of herselves: Her persona as Marilyn and the Norma Jeane within. Stuart's study of Marilyn's life and personalities is a study of love and brings a depth to his portraiture of Marilyn which her fans will recognize and general readers may appreciate for the first time.
Having piled all this glowing praise on Norma Jeane's Wishes in Time, I do also have a cautionary note to add. This is a big book, with 500+ pages in hardback, a lot of detail, observation, and commentary. So it's not a quick read. But it's definitely worth the effort.
I recommend it to everyone who likes books with science fiction, action and adventure, history, and Marilyn Monroe.
Danamo
President, NJ2MM
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