Aspiring reporter Sylvia Golubowsky pays her dues in the steno pool at the tabloid New York Star, along with sixteen other girls whose eyes are on the back of the chair in front of them, the next step up the ladder. At the rival paper across town, gossip columnist Austin Van Cleeve rules New York and Washington with his venomous pen. In the Village, Columbia University graduate Cal Byfield is stuck flipping burgers to support his dream of a Negro theatre on Broadway. In Shimmer, these three indelible characters unexpectedly collide with one another, amid the larger drama of their historical moment. In a fresh reinterpretation of the McCarthy era.