In the Shadow of the Greenbrier - Softcover

Matchar, Emily

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593713966 ISBN 13: 9780593713969

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Four generations. One remarkable hotel. Countless secrets.

Nestled in the hills of West Virginia lies White Sulphur Springs, home to the Greenbrier Resort. Long a playground for presidents and film stars, the Greenbrier has its own gravitational pull. Over ten decades, four generations of the Zelner family must grapple with their place in its shadow . . . and within their own family.

In 1942, young mother Sylvia is desperate to escape her stifling marriage, especially when it means co-running Zelner’s general store with her husband. When the Greenbrier is commandeered for use as a luxury prison, Sylvia finds her fidelity strained and her heart on the line.

Seventeen years later, Sylvia’s daughter, Doree, struggles to fit in, eagerly awaiting the day she’ll leave for college and meet a nice Jewish boy. But when a handsome stranger comes to town and her brother Alan’s curiosity puts him and Sylvia at risk, Doree is torn between loyalty and desire.

An immersive family saga rich with historical detail, In the Shadow of the Greenbrier explores the inevitable clash between past and future and the extraordinary moments in ordinary lives.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Emily Matchar has written for an array of publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Outside, Smithsonian, and the Atlantic. Originally from North Carolina, she lives with her husband and two sons. In the Shadow of the Greenbrier is her first novel.

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Chapter 1

Jordan

Washington, DC

January 1992

When the letter arrived, Jordan Barber was sitting at his desk eyeing the cuffs of his chinos, wondering if he could hem them with a stapler. If he did it from the inside out, maybe the little folded silver legs of the staples would look like fancy stitching.

A minute before, Rick Lowell from the National News desk had walked by and made a wisecrack about Jordan wearing his dad's clothes. Jordan wanted to shoot back that he was actually taller than his dad, but even he knew this was not the right way to do newsroom banter. So he just stared down at his feet, noticing how the pants puddled around the tops of his brown wingtips, which had felt so sharp when his mom bought them at Hecht's the month before but now seemed too shiny, as if announcing "I'm brand-new."

All the top reporters at the Post-the ones whose names appeared above the fold, who talked about having drinks "at Ben's," who'd flown on Air Force One-dressed like they'd slept at their desks all night: rumpled oxford shirts, loafers worn down to the color and texture of cardboard. Nobody else's shoes were shiny. No one else ironed their chinos.

Maybe Scotch Tape would work better than a stapler? Or masking tape? Jordan began rummaging in his desk drawer.

Just then, the mail cart clattered through, pushed by Alice the intern, who wore a plaid headband and a thousand-yard stare. She tossed a letter on Jordan's desk without turning her head.

"Thanks!" Jordan called, but Alice didn't look back.

He looked down at the letter.

Jordan Barber

Local and Regional News Desk

The Washington Post

Weird. He'd only been at the desk for four months, and he'd never had a letter personally addressed to him before. He was about to tear it open when he remembered his letter opener, the one his granddad had given him for college graduation. He plucked it from the University of Maryland mug where he kept his pens. It was brass and felt good in his hand, cool and heavy and professional. He slid it under the letter's flap, noting the West Virginia postmark. Unfolding the paper, he began to read. Then his eyes caught a name, and he stopped.

The Greenbrier.

The words sounded like a gong somewhere deep and primal in his brain, sound waves rippling outward. The Greenbrier.

There's something underneath the Greenbrier Resort, the letter read. It's time for people to know.

His mother had rarely referred to it as "the Greenbrier." It was simply "the resort."

Other children were told bedtime stories about princes or talking bunnies or teddy bear picnics. Jordan and his twin sister had been raised on tales of the Greenbrier: The green hotel Rolls-Royces that used to meet the trains. The movie stars hanging out by the pool. The doormen who all knew their mother's name, even though she was just a townie kid, not a guest. Jordan always imagined the resort as a fairy-tale castle atop a hill, with the village of White Sulphur Springs-his mother's hometown-in its shadow.

Their mother and their uncle Pete would go on and on about the annual Greenbrier employee Christmas parties-Remember that gingerbread house that was a perfect scale model of the resort? Remember the time Dewey Burdette broke Santa's throne? This would annoy Jordan's sister, since Jordan and Jessica were never allowed to so much as watch a Christmas movie. (That's how assimilation starts, their father would say, as if there were a slippery chute from It's a Wonderful Life straight to accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.)

Yet the Greenbrier was also somehow related to the other part of their mother's life, the part she didn't talk about. The part about her mother and her other brother, Alan. About what had happened to them. There was an incident with a car. Her mother and Alan had died and it had been terribly sad. That's all Jordan's mother would say. A terribly sad incident. Everything Jordan knew was gleaned from snatches of conversation overheard late at night, when Uncle Pete was in town.

He couldn't leave it alone. All that blood.

Their mother wouldn't tell them more. If Jessica pressed, Mom would sigh and turn away and let her eyes fill with tears.

Jordan never pressed. He hated to be the One Who Made His Mother Cry. But he did imagine. He pictured long, snouty, sinister cars full of anti-Semites, of course-as a child he misheard the word (ant-i-Semites), and imagined enormous ants, with shiny dark carapace-like armor.

Now a stranger was offering information about this black hole at the center of his childhood. Not only that, but the stranger was offering him a story. Maybe a big story. Jordan might not have the right pants or the right shoes, but he knew how to follow a lead as well as any of the A1 guys. Maybe this would be his chance.

Chapter 2

Doree

White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

December 1958

When people heard she was from West Virginia and raised their eyebrows a little-a look that said they were thinking of tar paper shacks and toothless snake handlers and black lung-Doree wished she could walk them through the Greenbrier Resort in the winter of 1958.

In fact, she had an exact date in mind. December 13. The day of the employees' Christmas party.

The resort gleamed like a cruise ship on the horizon. The acres of lawns as pampered as a starlet's hair. The fleet of bottle-green Rolls-Royces. The dining room so big waiters used to ride horses through it. The Swiss chefs who flambeed crêpes suzette tableside, just like in Monte Carlo. The crisp G stamped in the fresh white sand of every ashtray. The massive brass lobby doors swinging open and welcoming her inside.

Doree and her younger brothers, Alan and Pete, walked west along White Sulphur Springs's stunted Main Street, stopping at the corner of Surber Road to meet Patty and Tommy Curry. Pete and Tommy raced ahead, kicking stones with the toes of their dress shoes. Alan, as usual, trailed behind.

"I love that coat!" Patty said, reaching out to pet the shoulder of Doree's new tartan cape coat. "Did your mom do that?"

Doree nodded. "I like your new hat."

"It's going to squash my hair, though," Patty said.

Arms linked, they crossed the invisible line dividing town from resort and came to the entrance gate, where the younger boys were waiting, leaning against the brick. The driveway was flanked by tall white pillars topped with Grecian urns. From each pillar hung a wrought iron lantern, and beneath the lantern, in curling script, the words The Greenbrier.

Normally, when Doree and other townies visited the Greenbrier, they'd cut across the bridge over Howard's Creek and come in the lower North Entrance. But not today.

"We get to go in the big entrance today!" called Pete. "Like the Duke of York!"

"Duke of Windsor," muttered Alan.

On they walked, past the guardhouse, waving to Mr. Sammy in his forest-green suit and cap. They passed the South Carolina Cottages on their right, with their identical American flags hanging stiffly in the cold air. The younger boys picked up sticks on the hillside and began sword fighting. Then they turned the bend in the drive, and even Pete and Tommy stopped messing around for a minute because there it was, at the head of the oval lawn, seeming to glow in the pinkening dusk.

The resort.

It was a palace as large and white and splendid as anything in their history books, sitting tall on a gentle rise in the valley floor, the dark ridgeline of the Alleghenies its backdrop. Hundreds of windows-the resort had more than seven hundred guest rooms, Alan had told her-seemed to twinkle like stars. Front and center was an immense portico in the style of a Greek temple, a single oval...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593713966
• ISBN 13: 9780593713969
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar