A small family is driving from Seattle, where they picked up Uncle Robbie from rehab, back to South Carolina. They hit a snowstorm in Idaho and pull off the interstate to spend the night in a hotel. The Travelers Rest is a grand old place, currently being renovated and the only person they meet inside is the elderly owner. Quickly things start to go wrong.

Keith Lee Morris's book starts out as a novel about the Addison family; the fractures in their relationships highlighted by the presence of Tonio's little brother, the guy who is ambivalent about living near his disapproving sibling, while being attracted to his wife. The novel quickly changes though, once they reach the isolated mountain town with its decaying hotel, into what first looks like a horror novel, and it kind of is, but not in any traditional way, as the hotel rapidly separates each family member from the others. Tonio is stuck in an endless cycle of looking for his wife in the snowstorm and sitting in a parlor with the hotel owner. His wife is trapped in a room, but not that unhappy about it. His brother thinks he's left to go drinking as a choice he made, but with each passing day, he finds himself with less and less agency. And Tonio's son is left alone in an empty, unheated hotel, being fed by the owners of the diner across the street, who may understand his situation a lot better than he thinks.

This is a novel that starts strong and seems to be going in a specific direction, but then turns into something entirely different. This is an odd book. With every character isolated from the others, it turns into several different stories running in parallel. It also takes its time, meandering along as each character remains stuck. Two things kept me reading; the quality of the writing and the story of the boy, the one person still out in the world able to make decisions and try to find his family. ( )

This was a good story, and the ending was pretty good, and it did keep me going because I really wanted to find out how it ended. However, it could have been a bit shorter and took a bit too long to get to the meat of the story. It seemed there was a lot more drifting around than there really needed to be to tell the story. With that said I would like to check out more of this author's works. ( )

If you like Twin Peaks you’ll probably like this. And I do like Twin Peaks, but I felt like this whole book took place in the Black Lodge and there was never a respite from the confusing, dreamy weirdness. ( )

I spent the majority of this book seriously confused by what was going on. Despite my brain pleading for me to abandon it, I trudged on, hoping the mystery would be solved by the end.
I can honestly say that I still have no idea. ( )

The Book Cover:

The Addisons-Julia and Tonio, ten-year-old Dewey, and derelict Uncle Robbie-are driving home, cross-country, after collecting Robbie from yet another trip to rehab. When a terrifying blizzard strikes outside the town of Good Night, Idaho, they seek refuge in the town at the Travelers Rest, a formerly opulent but now crumbling and eerie hotel where the physical laws of the universe are bent. Once inside the hotel, the family is separated. As Julia and Tonio drift through the maze of the hotel's spectral interiors, struggling to make sense of the building's alluring powers, Dewey ventures outward to a secret-filled diner across the street. Meanwhile, a desperate Robbie quickly succumbs to his old vices, drifting ever further from the ones who love him most. With each passing hour, dreams and memories blur, tearing a hole in the fabric of our perceived reality and leaving the Addisons in a ceaseless search for one another. At each turn a mysterious force prevents them from reuniting, until at last Julia is faced with an impossible choice. Can this mother save her family from the fate of becoming Souvenirs-those citizens trapped forever in magnetic Good Night-or, worse, from disappearing entirely?

My Thoughts:

A really good read with a really well thought out plot. Part fairy-tale...part ghost story with a little fantasy thrown in for good measure. Be prepared to have the present the past and the future blend and bend at a moments notice...which can, at first, be a bit disconcerting. The bones of this novel is that reality has ceased to exist as we know it from the first step into the old hotel. 4 stars for a creepy good time.

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