Viking Books
The Dead Republic
by Roddy Doyle
From the back cover
Henry Smart is back. It is 1946, and Henry has crawled into the desert of Utah's Monument Valley to die. He's stumbled onto a film set though, and saved by none other than Henry Fonda, he ends up in Hollywood collaborating with legendary director John Ford on a script based on his life. Returning to Ireland in 1951 to film The Quiet Man- which Henry's consternation, has been completely sentimentalized- he severs his relationship with Ford.