LaunCHING 3/16/2026

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A prodigy with a gift for languages and a taste for danger, Marcello Luna leaves Montevideo in 1977 with a glittering résumé—Fulbright scholar, concert-level pianist, chameleon in any room—and a secret that could unmake him.

In Los Angeles, he and his poised wife Beatriz step into the orbit of a Beverly Hills dynasty where money is a mirror and every reflection lies. What begins as reinvention becomes seduction, fraud, and a love story twisted by ambition.

As the city glows—Trousdale parties, Vegas openings, the mother church of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles - The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels—Beatriz charts another map: the quiet ledger of what survival costs. While whispers about a new, nameless illness move from rumor to hospital corridors, Marcello’s charisma curdles into control, and the couple’s marriage becomes the stage for a final, devastating performance.

Told with the elegance of a classic Hollywood melodrama and the bite of a modern thriller, The Solicitor spans a decade of secrets and awakenings, from candlelit cathedrals in Uruguay to mirrored salons above Sunset. It’s a story about forbidden love and the masks we choose; about class, immigration, and the AIDS era’s shattering truth; and about the one legacy we get to decide—who tells our story when we cannot.

For readers ofThe Talented Mr. Ripley, The Line of Beauty, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, this is a lavish, propulsive novel about desire, deception, and the price of being seen.

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A brilliant Fulbright Scholar with a dangerous charm, Marcello Luna remakes his life from Montevideo to 1980s Los Angeles—until his appetites tip into deception. As chaos closes in, Beatriz becomes the novel’s quiet force, navigating privilege, secrets, and the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. Lushly detailed and emotionally tense, The Solicitor is a story of forbidden love, immigrant reinvention, and the price of being seen.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SHAUNA RITZ

Shauna has traveled extensively and built a life defined by deep cultural immersion and global experience. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Communications and a Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology. An accomplished filmmaker, she has produced and directed three documentary films examining culture, medicine, and tradition in developing regions, successfully raising funds and awareness for international humanitarian efforts. One of these works, the feature-length film Legacy—which premiered at the Santa Fe and Durango Film Festivals—explores and preserves trades and ways of life disappearing in the wake of technological and societal change. Shauna has operated a ranch in the Rocky Mountains for over three decades where she lives with her husband, growing organic crops, and homing scores of rescue animals. 

“Who are you, really? Who am I because of you?”

“Who are you, really? Who am I because of you?”

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”

Rumi

  • “It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever. But there is no other way. The river cannot go back. Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence. The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear, because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean.”

    Fear by Kahil Gibran

Get in Touch

Interested to collaborate with Shauna Ritz, inquiring about speaking engagement or an author reading, please reach out using our form!

Contact publicist Jeremy Broekman for rights, interviews and collaboration.

+1(818)212-9201
jeremy@broekmancomm.com