Trailer Park Tuesday: Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.

With Baz Luhrman's 3-Delightful version of The Great Gatsby opening in movie theaters this week, F. Scott Fitzgerald is suddenly in vogue again.  Interestingly, it's his wife Zelda who is getting all the attention in a bumper crop of novels this year--Therese Anne Fowler's Z, Lee Smith's Guests on Earth, R. Clifton Spargo's Beautiful Fools and, just released today, Erika Robuck's Call Me Zelda.  Robuck has already taken her literary imagination into the household of Ernest Hemingway (Hemingway's Girl) and has a novel about Edna St. Vincent Millay in the works, so I'm intrigued by what she has in store for readers who want to know more about the troubled marriage of Mr. and Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald.  In the trailer for Call Me Zelda, Robuck reads a couple of excerpts from the novel, places flowers at the couple's graves, and talks about what led her to write about Zelda.  At her website, she describes more of the book's plot and inspiration:

It begins in Baltimore in 1932 when Zelda Fitzgerald checks into the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins, and takes place during the aftermath of the Fitzgerald party years. Through Zelda’s relationship with a fictional psychiatric nurse, the book explores the meaning of friendship, love, and how we heal from emotional injury.  Call Me Zelda is a book that I’ve held close to my heart for a long time, inspired by my fascination with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and by the nurses I’ve known in my life (grandmother, mother-in-law, aunt, sister-in-law, friends…), who give so much of themselves to their patients. It also comes from my compassion for those who suffer mental illness and post-traumatic stress disorder, the ways they are often misunderstood, and the pain of the family members caring for them.