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Proof of Progress

Sale price$34.99

Elizabeth Castellano | Paperback | September 2026

A witty and sharp-tongued novel about a writer and actress who finally comes to write the manuscript that is thirty-seven years overdue – for fans of We All Want Impossible Things and The Correspondent.

Maria Astorini, once late-night talk show darling, is having a moment. The B-list actress has survived deaths, divorces, a famous mother, a Hollywood blacklist, a string of public embarrassments, an aging face, financial ruin, an empty nest, a difficult best friend, and a worldwide pandemic. Now, she’s back and bigger than ever. A small, unexpected role has heightened her celebrity status and propelled her, at age sixty-five, into the limelight. And then, along comes the call Maria has spent decades avoiding. It’s her publisher asking, ‘Where is that book?’

But Maria hasn’t been able to write a book about her life – she’s been too busy living it. To finally fulfil her contract, Maria writes, or attempts to write, a pile of pages meant to vaguely resemble the book she promised to deliver nearly four decades earlier.

In a series of bite-sized anecdotes, she candidly recalls her past, chronicling the significant, and insignificant, moments of her full, funny and extraordinarily unpredictable life.

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Author Info

Elizabeth Castellano lives in New York, and is the author of Save What’s Left and Proof of Progress.

Book cover for 'Proof of Progress' by Elizabeth Castellano, featuring a cream background with hand-drawn illustrations of people carrying furniture in black, white, green, orange, and blue, with the title in large gray script.
Proof of Progress Sale price$34.99