In The Stars Shine Down, Sheldon resumes his usual practice of making a beautiful, intelligent woman his chief protagonist. As the novel opens, Lara Cameron is on her way to a birthday party in her honor where her guests will include dignitaries from both the political world and the business world. Her building projects have been highly successful, and she has tried to make her past as glamorous as the social position she currently occupies. Actually, she was poverty stricken, the daughter of an abusive alcoholic father. She has recently bought a castle in Scotland and buried him there. Unloved as a child, she has created a myth that her father was from a great family and was devoted to her.

She is determined that her name, already on many buildings throughout the country, will soon be on the world's tallest Skyscraper. She is known as the "Iron...