Guarding Gable—an original audio novel by Nat Segaloff—starts with an actual event in the life of the screen’s number one star and becomes a story worthy of a Hollywood movie.

It’s 1942 and World War Two is just beginning. Beloved actress Carole Lombard is killed in a plane crash while returning from a bond-selling tour and her husband, Clark Gable, is beyond consolation. Depressed to the point of suicide, he enlists in the US Army Air Corps, telling his bosses at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that he doesn’t care if he ever comes back.

Naturally, MGM is apoplectic at the prospect of losing their top box office attraction. In desperation, studio head Louis B. Mayer leans on a lowly publicist, Alan Greenberg, to enlist with Gable with orders to keep him alive during World War Two. That’s hard to do when Gable insists on flying combat missions over Nazi-occupied Europe. Not only that, he and Alan fall in love with the same woman—and, if you’re Alan, how do you win the girl if your competition is Clark Gable?

Guarding Gable is a story of love, war, and humor. This “enhanced” audiobook combines narrative with sounds of war, environments, and excerpts from the training film that Gable made while reluctantly grounded.

There’s also a little rough language; after all, this is the Army.

Guarding Gable runs approximately five hours and is told and produced by the author, Nat Segaloff. It’s a special presentation by Blackstone Audio from Bear Manor Media.