Author Jim Shankman crafts an emotional, intricate drama exploring movies and life in Tales of the Patriarchs.

In the early silent film era, Sydney Thrall wants to do more than just make money like the stock brokers on Wall Street, so his mother directs him to Uncle Jacob, who runs a casting agency. Sidney’s eye for business impresses Jacob, but his unsettling tendencies—inability to sleep, hyper fixation on numbers, difficulty connecting socially—prompt Jacob to ship him out to Hollywood. Out West, the studios are beginning to ramp up, and Jacob hopes Sidney’s talents can fuel that fire.

Sidney soon finds a like-minded soul in Judah, and the two become rivals in both movie-making and romance. They fight over Nina, a sultry young actress, with their three lives becoming intertwined and rife with eroticism.

Shankman channels a love of movies into a unique epic that pulls from his career as a playwright, actor, and novelist. The book focuses on Sidney’s life, but that story intertwines with Judah and Nina’s experiences, giving a more well-rounded look at the era.

As it pulls from the history of the silent film era, layering in sex, violence, and ambition, the epic narrative is filled with colorful characters, witty conversations, rich descriptions, and even poetic passages: “The wild sleeping mind of the roaring twenties dreamed a jazz age song in the silence of the silver screen; and the song was Sidney and Nina.”

Shankman shifts the story’s viewpoint between each of the main characters. Sidney, Judah’s and Nina’s perspectives are told in straightforward third-person, but sometimes, the story turns to Nina’s first-person perspective, which feels out of place, jarring, and disorienting, as it’s almost entirely stream-of-consciousness. Shankman also takes his time building the novel’s world, which slows the initial pace. This, coupled with the jarring viewpoint shifts, requires patience.

Happily, that patience is eventually rewarded with intriguing characters and an absorbing story that will particularly satisfy those interested in the silent film era.