In 1922, at age fifteen, Louise Brooks left Wichita, Kansas, for New York City, embarking on a lifetime of legendary adventures, successes, and mysteries. From her early career as a dancer to her years as a film star in Hollywood and Berlin, she was hailed and reviled as a completely new type of woman: independent, intellectually daring, and sexually free. In this widely acclaimed, first and only comprehensive biography of the celebrity-cum-recluse, Barry Paris traces Brooks's trajectory from her childhood to international fame, through her notorious fall into obscurity and her subsequent "resurrection" as a brilliant writer and enduring film icon.