Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Biography, Literature & Literary studies

TRAVELERS REST

Keith Lee Morris

A chilling fable about a family marooned in a snowbound town whose grievous history intrudes on the dreamlike present.

The Addisons--Julia and Tonio, ten-year-old Dewey, and ne'er-do-well Uncle Robbie--are driving home, cross-country, after collecting Robbie from detox. When a blizzard strikes the town of Good Night, Idaho, they seek refuge at the Travelers Rest, a once-opulent but now crumbling hotel where the laws of the universe are bent.

Once inside the hotel, the family is separated. Something mysterious prevents them from reuniting, until Julia is faced with an impossible choice. Can she save her family from the fate of becoming Souvenirs--those citizens trapped forever in magnetic Good Night--or disappearing entirely? What her choice entails is revealed in prose as dizzyingly beautiful as the mystical world Morris creates.

The Believer magazine called Keith Lee Morris "the heir to Richard Ford", saying that “he has that rare gift of writing truthfully about people we know and care for."

Keith Lee Morris is the author of two previous novels and two collections of stories. "The Dart League King" (2008) was a Publishers Weekly “Pick of the Week” and a Barnes and Noble Discover selection.

Available products
Book Published 2016-01-05 by Little Brown
Book Published 2016-01-05 by Little Brown

Comments

Expertly refurbishing an old structure, this haunted-hotel novel generates some genuine chills.... Morris () handles the spooky materials deftly, but his writing is what makes the story really scary: quiet and languorous, sweeping steadily and inexorably along like a curtain of drifting snow identified too late as an avalanche. Read more...

Travelers Rest’ is the definition of dreamlike prose Read more...

Calmann Levy (France), Weidenfeld and Nicolson (UK)

Echoing the fantastic work of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King, Travelers Rest is both fiercely gripping and deeply unsettling, a perfect mixture of horror and fairy tale held together by Keith Lee Morris's unique ability to look beyond the imposing hotel and take us inside the hearts and minds of this trapped family, a feat that makes this story all the more frightening and moving. This is a novel that pulls you in immediately and refuses to let you go.

Another fascinating interview with Morris... Read more...

It’s beautifully written. Morris has an adroit hand for characterization and atmosphere….the haunting isolation of Good Night looms and chills throughout the story. Read more...

It won't take long-a page, maybe two-before you feel wondrously disquieted by Keith Lee Morris's Travelers Rest. The novel traps its characters in the town of Good Night, Idaho, and the reader in its shaken snow globe of a world. The language dazzles and the circumstances chill and put this story in the good company of Stephen King's The Shining, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and David Lynch's Twin Peaks. This is a breakout book that will earn Morris the wide readership he richly deserves.

Keith Lee Morris knows what fiction is made for: in Travelers Rest he creates an intriguing world, poses big questions, and gives us sentences that by themselves are worth the read. What happens, he asks, when the person who goes missing is yourself? And you're lost not only in space, but also in time. And the people you love most are counting on you to save them because they are missing, too. Morris invites us to lose ourselves in his stunning new novel and find out.

In his artful hands, the fallible and relatable characters make for good company in the punchy cabin-fever atmosphere…Morris' third novel is just as rewarding as his short stories, brimming as it is with ghosts, dream mines, and snowy mazes in his own private Idaho. Read more...

PW includes the book in its roundup of “exceptional books out this week.” Read more...

Alice in Wonderland meets The Shining when four travelers are stranded in Good Night, Idaho, during a freak blizzard . . . [Travelers Rest] proves itself weighty, suspenseful, and even wistful . . . The lasting impact [of Good Night] on the characters is rather poignant.

Greenville News Online shares an interview with Keith Lee Morris, where Morris discusses writing, teaching, and the real-life inspiration behind the fictional town of Good Night, Idaho. Read more...