A gun moll with a knack for disappearing flees from Prohibition-era Harlem to Portland’s Paragon Hotel.The year is 1921, and “Nobody” Alice James has just arrived in Oregon with a bullet wound, a lifetime’s experience battling the New York Mafia, and fifty thousand dollars in illicit cash. She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of home and who saves Alice by leading … Alice by leading her to the Paragon Hotel. But her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be an all-black hotel in a Jim Crow city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises.
As she meets the churlish Dr. Pendleton, the stately Mavereen, and the club chanteuse Blossom Fontaine, she understands their dread. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland in fearful numbers–burning crosses, electing officials, infiltrating newspapers, and brutalizing blacks. And only Alice and her new Paragon “family” are searching for a missing mulatto child who has mysteriously vanished into the woods. To untangle the web of lies and misdeeds around her, Alice will have to answer for her own past, too.
A richly imagined novel starring two indomitable heroines, The Paragon Hotel at once plumbs the darkest parts of America’s past and the most redemptive facets of humanity. From international-bestselling, multi-award-nominated writer Lyndsay Faye, it’s a masterwork of historical suspense.
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From the opening scene, this novel had me in its grip. Faye delivers a riveting story filled with unforgettable characters and stunning prose, while never flinching from the painful truths surrounding America’s legacy of racial injustice. A remarkable, significant novel.
Full of wry wit, dark humor and magnificent period details, The Paragon Hotel is a wickedly poetic tour de force.
Historical mystery/thriller, BIPOC history, queer history, cabaret culture, gangsters, narrated in a wonderful voice.
Such interesting history, & so many unfortunate similarities still in present day racism!?! Would guess many people are not aware of Oregon’s legislation re: “Negroes”. Wonderful characters!!!
Best book I’ve read in a while.
Some of the most colorful and creative word-smithing I’ve read. True, this type of story is a departure from my usual spy and military genre. It could be there are many authors as gifted as Lindsay Faye and I have missed them with the more calculated, technical writing style of action and intrigue. Still, I have to believe the characters and prose of this book are exceptional among current writers. The 4 of 5 stars is probably that the book seemed a little long at time. However, I will put that more on me not being used to this style. I highly recommend giving this book a read.
This is a story about how segregation impacted Portland in the early 19oo’s. Very interesting
Boring. Gave up after about 75 pages. Hotel seemed interesting but back story convoluted, confusing and pointless. Descriptions way too wordy
Wretched unsympathetic characters—I was “finished after four chapters. Yuck!
Quite an unusual story, hard to categorize, though I found it surprisingly entertaining from start to finish.
Riveting story of a white “gun moll” who flees New York by train with a bullet wound and a bag of dough. She ends up in Portland, OR, at a hotel populated by blacks under siege by the local KKK. The author maintains a steady pace of wit, tension, and historical authenticity. Nicely done!
Besides being a great read and one that really keeps you surprised, this was set in a place and time in history I had never read about. Highly recommend!.
What happens when a female bootlegger is on the run from the mean streets of New York and the murderous grip of the Italian mob? She jumps a train and heads out west. Set in the 1920’s, alternating timelines and locales of Harlem and Portland, Oregon, this story is a historical thriller based on the only all-black hotel of its time in Portland. It’s both heartbreaking and heart-pounding. I ate it up!
I had really looked forward to this book. The first half is very hard to get through; it really drags a lot. The author alternates between NYC with the mafia and Portland with the KKK. Perhaps most interesting, are the excerpts from local Oregon publications at the time the book was set, addressing blacks and the KKK in their state. They are shocking! Given this focus, and the complexity of what was happing in Portland during this time, I wish the author had only focused on this angle and skipped all the mafia stuff. The Portland story was really good; it could have been developed even further, and I would have really enjoyed that. I just didn’t enjoy the NYC sections. I get what the author was trying to do, and it did make me think (a lot) about the 2 differing experiences. However, I felt like I was forcing myself to read it rather than wanting to read it. That being said, I’m glad I finished it. So 4 stars!
Such a fun, vivid voice – Alice James is a flapper with a conscience and a past. Loved it.
Great read. Liked the historical period in which the story takes place.
This is one of the best novels I’ve read since The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.
It tells an original story brilliantly.
Gangsters and prostitutes, nightclub singers and dodgy cops, an African-American hotel under constant threat of violence…Lyndsay Faye drops us right in the middle of the tumult of the Prohibition Era, bringing to life one of the darker times in our nation’s history with wit and heart.
A novel at once thrilling and wise, historic and timely. ‘Nobody’ is somebody who will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
The hardback has just arrived. I have read three pages. It is a new voice, so different from her 19th century voice, which was bewitching and immaculate. I am in the 1920s now, I think. (There was no need to bother with a blurb. .. it is Lyndsey Faye after all) I am set for my journey led by the delectable prose, by the vibrant narrator that I have only just met. There are some books you want to sip rather than gulp, to relish. But eventually you’ll gulp anyway. Some authors – but so very few – who tell a tale without pretention, who you deliver yourself to, heart and soul, in only three pages.