“Delaney[‘s] splendidfictional biography of Cary Grant . . . perfectly befits the glamour and fakeryof his subject.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Everyone wants to be Cary Grant,” mused the world’s most famous leading man. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”

It’s 1959, and the 55-year-old man who calls himself CaryGrant is at the peak of a charmed career. He’s also on a turbulent journey tofind the core of a self he hardly seems to know anymore. Introduced to the wonderdrug LSD as part of his therapy at The Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills,he embarks on upward of one hundred psychedelic trips—at times harrowing journeys.And on the way, he rediscovers the long-ago boy who faced the world as ArchieLeach, the earnest, gap-toothed stilt walker and tumbler he once was, long ago.

     In The Acrobat, fiction writer Edward J. Delaney takes onthe elusive character of Cary Grant. He imagines the inner life of a man who spenta career brilliantly creating a persona as ethereal as his best roles. As Grantlaunches on LSD-fueled trajectories of discovery, The Acrobat likewise transportsreaders through his fractured upbringing, his start in English vaudeville, hislife on the Hollywood sets, and his relationships with fellow travelers prominent in hislife: Howard Hughes, Randolph Scott, Blake Edwards, Tony Curtis, two of the fivewomen he married, and more. Amid the endless versions of himself and thecharacters he’s played, he yearns to shape himself into something singular, forged fromthe layers of illusion he’s smilingly foisted on the world, and for which the worldhas come to love him. This riveting dramatization of the actor’s life takes usbeyond the firm terrain that biographies tread, to offer a new perspective on acomplex Hollywood legend.