The book that quickly outsold Gone With the Wind has one of the most famous opening lines in literature: "Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay."  

As it turns out, Indian summer was a lot like the woman behind those words. Grace Metalious landed into the national consciousness with the subtlety of an atom bomb upon publication of her first novel, Peyton Place, in 1956. What we take for granted after multiple seasons of Desperate Housewives (that small-town life is just as sinful as big city living) was a new concept then, and Grace's neighbor were not thrilled to be thrust under the microscope. Especially when she was so cavalier as to use an actual neighbor's name and physical description for one of her characters.

But as it turns out, Grace's fame was as fleeting as Indian summer. In 1956 she was a phenomenon. Eight years later, she was dead at age 39 of cirrhosis of the liver. Join Mark Peikert as he takes you on a journey through mid-century America that encompasses everything from incest to Lana Turner to a Bloody Mary thrown in a screenwriter's face.  

Logo: Jessica Balaschak