Hotel

Once in a generation there is produced a stirring, exciting story set against the background of a great hotel.

This is such a book.

The scene is the St. Gregory Hotel in the lusty, tumultuous city of New Orleans. Time: 1964.

Through five eventful days we share the fortunes, conflicts, and intimacies affecting the hotel, its guests, its echelon of management. Across the novel's pages stride memorable characters: "Warren Trent", the St. Gregory's bigoted, irascible owner; his assistant, "Christine Francis", vivacious, ardent, yet shadowed by personal tragedy; the young general manager, "Peter McDermott", competent and honorable, but a prisoner of his own past indiscretion; "Marsha Preyscott", the teen-age New Orleans heiress, ruthless in attaining her own desires; and also an engaging "sous-chef" and organizational genius, an embittered young Negro, a despicable bell captain and purveyor of vice, and a humble disposer of garbage who proves to be the keeper of the Hotel's conscience.

And the guests: "Curtis O'Keefe", praying, fun-loving tycoon whose chicanery would add the St. Gregory to his world-wide, conformity-stamped hotel chain; O'Keefe's glamorous traveling companion, "Dodo Lask"; "Dr. Ingram", a man of principle who defied the hotel and reaped the scorn of his own convention colleagues; statesman, aristocrat, and coward, the "Duke of Duchess"; the modest, kindly ex-miner, "Albert Wells", escaping death to become a friend when needed most; and "Keycase Milne", a likeable Barabbas.

These, and other, people the richly woven texture of HOTEL.

More than this: a star of the story is the hotel itself. Seldom, if ever, has there been a more fascinating glimpse into the inner machinery and secrets of a great hotel, laid open to the reader by a master storyteller.