“This is the story of one week in my life. I was seventeen. It was the week I slept in Orson Welles’s pajamas. It was the week I fell in love. And it was the week I changed my middle name—twice.”
     
So begins Me and Orson Welles, a comic coming-of-age novel set against the background of the twenty-two-year-old Orson Welles’s debut production at the Mercury Theatre on Broadway in 1937. Richard Samuels is the stage-struck seventeen-year-old from New Jersey who wanders onto the set one day and gets a small role in Welles’s Julius Caesar. His life will never be the same….

About Robert Kaplow

Kaplow is a teacher and writer who for more than fifteen years has written satirical songs and sketches for National Public Radio's Morning Edition, where he created “Moe Moskowitz and the Punsters.” His acclaimed young adults novels include Alessandra in Love and Alex Icicle: A Romance in Ten Torrid Chapters. He lives in Metuchen, New Jersey.