Held to Answer

A wall buzzer croaks, and John Hampstead bursts from his chair so violently that papers fly and an office door rattles. The men laughing at his ungainly walk have no idea what he believes he is destined to become.

In early-1900s Los Angeles, John is a stenographer in a railway office, where men deal in olives and oil while he treats even the smallest duty as a kind of sacrament. Big, clumsy, and hungry for a life beyond the typewriter, he carries a newspaper clipping to Charles Kenton, an actor offering lessons. Kenton studies him and delivers a verdict: “Your face doesn’t fit.” John refuses to take that as the end of the matter. But acting, Kenton insists, demands more than a trained voice or graceful walk; it calls for the whole person—and a great soul. Can John make his mismatched face, body, and hidden ambition speak as one?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.