War comes knocking at the doors of an Appalachian luxury hotel built on a mystical mountain spring in this assured, propulsive first adult novel from powerhouse YA author Maggie Stiefvater (Call Down the Hawk; The Raven Cycle)
The morning of January 25, 1942, starts out like any other for June Hudson, mountaineer and general manager of the Avallon, a West Virginia luxury hotel. On the evening's agenda is a Robert Burns-themed ball--a demonstration that life at the hotel will remain unchanged despite the entrance of the U.S. into World War II. June has staff to direct and guests to please, "people so high on the social ladder they had to duck for the sun to go overhead." The Avallon attracts a privileged class with the money to buy themselves time surrounded by beauty, five-star service, and the allegedly curative "sweetwater" from the springs that feed the hotel's taps and bathhouses. June's job is to make sure customers feel pampered and to keep tabs on the emotions flowing in the almost-sentient waters. Then the Feds arrive.
Special Agent Tucker Minnick of the FBI informs June that her guests must leave to make way for 300 foreign nationals--high-profile citizens of Axis nations living in the U.S. The group includes diplomats and celebrities, and their family members, all in need of protection and possibly containment. Tucker, whose coal tattoo hints at a past in mining, is under pressure to turn a few key diplomats into U.S. informants or lose his career at the Bureau. His task is tough enough, but he didn't count on finding the Avallon's manager so compelling. June has her hands full convincing her staff to wait hand and foot on Axis dignitaries and her head full of her affair with the hotel's young owner, but her attraction to Tucker and her concern for the young daughter of a Nazi official will change everything she thought she knew about her future at the Avallon.
Stiefvater's unerringly distinct voice gives an almost supernatural glamor to the beauty of the West Virginia wilderness; the extravagant, remote setting adds an underpinning of gothic grandeur. Themes of class segregation and the meaning of luxury run through a narrative centering a cast of ordinary people caught in the march to war. A touch of magical realism ought to satisfy fans of Stiefvater's fantasy novels, and this mature, layered drama should appeal to historical fiction readers as well. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: In early 1942, a remote West Virginia luxury hotel must host Axis citizens, to its manager's dismay, in Maggie Stiefvater's assured, propulsive first adult novel.