The Paragon Hotel

A gun moll with a knack for disappearing flees from Prohibition-era Harlem to Portland's Paragon Hotel in the latest novel from critically acclaimed author Lyndsay Faye. The year is 1921, and "Nobody" Alice James is on a cross-country train, carrying a bullet wound and fleeing for her life following an illicit deal gone horribly wrong. Desperate to get far away from New York City and those who want her dead, she has her sights set on Oregon: a distant frontier that seems the end of the line. She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter, who leads Alice to the Paragon Hotel upon arrival in Portland. Her sanctuary turns out to be the only all-black hotel in the city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises. But as she meets the churlish Dr. Pendleton, the stately Mavereen, and the unforgettable club chanteuse Blossom Fontaine, she begins to understand the reason for their dread. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland--burning crosses, inciting violence, electing officials, and brutalizing blacks. And only Alice, along with her new "family" of Paragon residents, are willing to search for a missing mulatto child who has vanished into the Oregon woods. A richly imagined novel starring two unforgettable heroines, The Paragon Hotel at once plumbs the darkest parts of America's past and the most redemptive facets of our humanity. From international bestselling, multi-award-nominated writer Lyndsay Faye, it's a masterwork of historical suspense.