At the time of his 1939 suicide, the German antifascist dramatist Ernst Toller was a global celebrity. After leading Bavaria's failed revolution in 1919, the plays and poems that he wrote in prison were translated into more than a dozen languages. Toller's fame reached new levels after Hitler seized power in 1933, and his opposition to the Nazis led to the burning of his books in Germany. Yet the writer's brave face of resistance in exile hid a bevy of personal and professional crises.

Richard Byrne's investigation of Toller's mysterious death mask - made in the hours after his suicide - led him to blow the dust off evidence contained in long-neglected archives. He found a cascade of shocking new details, provocative connections, and hidden secrets: abandoned ashes, fractious leftist politics, Hollywood gossip, lost artworks, comic book wars, and the identity of the author's long hidden lover in his last days.