A smart, juicy, and page-turning novel about celebrity, fandom, and the price of ambition following a journalist’s obsessive search for a missing Hollywood starlet.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Hayley Krischer’s Where Are You, Echo Blue?, which is out now.
When Echo Blue, the most famous child star of the nineties, disappears ahead of a highly publicized television appearance on the eve of the millennium, the salacious theories instantly start swirling. Mostly, people assume Echo has gotten herself in trouble after a reckless New Year’s Eve. But Goldie Klein, an ambitious young journalist who also happens to be Echo’s biggest fan, knows there must be more to the story. Why, on the eve of her big comeback, would Echo just go missing without a trace?
After a year of covering dreary local stories for Manhattan Eye, Goldie is sure this will be her big break. Who better to find Echo Blue, and tell her story the right way, than her? And so, Goldie heads to L.A. to begin a wild search that takes her deep into Echo’s complicated life in which parental strife, friend break ups, rehab stints, and bad romances abound. But the further into Echo’s world Goldie gets, the more she questions her own complicity in the young star’s demise . . . yet she cannot tear herself away from this story, which has now consumed her entirely. Meanwhile, we also hear Echo’s side of things from the beginning, showing a young woman who was chewed up and spit out by Hollywood as so many are, and who may have had to pay the ultimate price.
As these young women’s poignant and unexpected journeys unfold, and eventually meet, Where Are You, Echo Blue? interrogates celebrity culture, the thin line between admiration and obsession, and what it means to tell other peoples’ stories, all while ushering us on an unruly ride to find out what did become of Echo Blue.
CHAPTER 1
GOLDIE
In 2000, right after the turn of the millennium, I began my search for Echo Blue, who was the most famous child star of the late twentieth century.
I was obsessed. But you already know this.
I was covering the New Year’s celebration at the New York Times because I wasn’t talented enough to get a job at the New York Times. Instead, I was an entry‑level reporter at Manhattan Eye. I was at ME because they were the only ones to give me a callback. This wasn’t something I would readily admit.
I was twenty‑two, and I should have felt lucky to have the job. ME was an institution, a respected magazine, a stepping‑stone for Times’ journalists and editors, but it was also a dinosaur sans the Times’ subscription numbers.
I had agreed to this assignment because I didn’t have any plans for that night, and I thought I could at least introduce myself to a few people. Except all the editors were drunk. There was no networking to be done. Among the desks and offices of the Times’ eleventh floor, a fancy dinner of filet mignon and shrimp was served by waiters wearing white gloves, while jazz from a live band floated from the brightly lit balcony.
Old white editors stood around their printers and desks in stuffy black‑ and‑white tuxedos. It was like witnessing the sinking of the Titanic.
The staff writers huddled alone at their desks behind big‑windowed offices, clearly too busy to participate—or at least hoping to seem like they were. I passed the office of Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Siobhan O’Donnell three times, staring as she clacked away at her keyboard, until she threw a book at me and screamed to stop skulking around her door. I nibbled on a few shrimp, took a sip out of the engraved champagne flutes that read 01‑00‑00. I snapped a photo of the incorrect date. Then a reporter who I think was on acid shouted, “Don’t you dare take a picture of me,” and hid behind a cubicle.
In the corner of the room there were three large televisions on a table turned to local news stations. No one seemed to be paying attention, so I inched my way over to one of the televisions and casually flipped the channel to MTV, where I expected to see Echo Blue cozily chatting with TRL host Carson Daly. They had promoted her appearance for weeks. Instead, a commotion had erupted, with producers on their mics, scrambling in the background.
Then Carson Daly spoke directly into the camera. “Okay, guys, it looks like Echo Blue can’t make it.” The studio audience groaned. “I know. Really sorry, everyone.” Then he whispered to someone off camera, though the mic was still hot, “They don’t know where she is at all?” He composed himself and faced forward. “I know everyone was looking forward to hearing from her—I certainly was—and I’m sure we’ll see her soon. Echo, Happy New Year.”
It was like an electric bolt jolted me back into my childhood, where I had locked up years of memories. Echo Blue hadn’t shown up for her gig? What did this mean? I looked around for someone who was as alarmed as I was. There she was, her face plastered across the screen of at least one of the televisions. But these arrogant New York Times editors remained focused on their millennium cake and shrimp. These had been people I wanted to impress only minutes before, but now I judged them for their indifference toward what was potentially the biggest celebrity news story of the decade.
In June, Echo Blue had finished a stint in rehab for “exhaustion.” Up until that point, Echo’s life was a movie unto itself. Her parents were Hollywood royalty. Her mother was Mathilde Portman, who starred in the classic television show Gold Rush, and her father, Jamie Blue, was once one of the industry’s most handsome and charismatic stars. Plus, Echo starred in six films in six years, one of them winning her an Oscar for best supporting actress when she was only fourteen.
I hate sounding like a tabloid, but for the sake of brevity, Echo went from golden child to messy ingénue practically overnight. That’s when the trouble started for her, the kind of real salacious gossip that turns actors into caricatures. There was the emancipation (though she insisted it was just to get around child labor laws), the romance and breakup with the much older boyfriend. There was the threat of stalkers, many of whom—all male—she reportedly took out restraining orders against. There was the rumored shoplifting incident at Bergdorf Goodman, though I never found a police report confirming it. And that messy interview with Vanity Fair where she openly drank a martini at a bar as a teenager. The New York Post headline screamed, “ECHO: HOW LOW WILL SHE GO?” I had followed it all.
But she was about to make a comeback—at least that’s what the promotions for her New Year’s appearance declared. She was embarking on an independent film, I Hate Camp. She was clean and had cut ties with the bad‑boy boyfriend. Why would someone who just got her life together not show up to one of the biggest promotional events of the century? Something didn’t fit.
I felt numb and shaky, so I attempted to slow my breathing like my therapist had taught me years ago. It was time for me to get out of this boring party. For some reason—I blame my nerves—I did a contrived princess wave to one of my contacts and slipped out of the newsroom. I panted underneath the fluorescent lights in the elevator, trying to calm myself down, knowing answers would only come in the sour scent of the morning paper.
