A Short Time to Stay Here

Terry Roberts

Description

- ARC distribution to bookstores, libraries, and various review publications
- DRC distribution through Edelweiss
- Radio media outreach
- Press release to media, booksellers, and trade
- Regional media focus (Appalachia, North Carolina, Southern)
- Outreach to veteran groups and PTSD support groups
- Featured on Turner Publishing's #FreeBookFriday email. Additional giveaways will be done on Amazon and Goodreads.
- Promotion on author's website www.terryrobertsauthor.com and www.ashorttimetostayhere.com

The summer of 1917 should have been a summer like any other. Stephen Robbins should have been doing the same thing he'd been doing for years past. As a young boy he'd fled his life in a secluded mountain cove and risen through the ranks to become the manager of the South's finest resort, the elegant Mountain Park Hotel. By all rights, he should have spent this summer as host to some of the wealthiest gentry on the East Coast. Hans Ruser, German Commodore of the world's largest and most luxurious cruise liner, Vaderland, should have been sailing yet again with his elite passengers to the far corners of the world. And Anna Ulmann, captivating and beautiful, should have been at home in her New York mansion planning yet another lavish dinner party for her famous husband and his rich and powerful friends. She should have idled away her spare time by taking perfectly staged photographic portraits of the very same people.

But war will change everything that should have been in that summer of 1917— the U.S. enters WWI and the Mountain Park Hotel is pressed into service as an internment camp for over 2,000 German nationals, including Ruser and his men. This sudden collision of lives and cultures in the small town of Hot Springs, North Carolina is both frightening and exhilarating. And the unlikely alliance that forms between Hans Ruser and Stephen Robbins will force each to decide just how far they are willing to go to keep peace in the beautiful and isolated mountains. Feisty Anna Ulmann, seeking to assert her independence in a male-dominated world, mysteriously flees south to devote her life to documentary photography. When she steps off the train at the Hot Springs depot one sultry summer day, she could not have imagined the passionate journey that will result when she matches wits with Stephen Robbins. Haunted by demons both past and present, they will face heartbreaking tragedy. Yet together they will discover the true meaning of imprisonment and escape.

Sujets

• Cultural Heritage
• Historical
• Anthropocene
• General officer
• Wiley
• MacDougall
• General
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 06 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781681629537
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A SHORT TIME TO STAY HERE
PRAISE FOR A SHORT TIME TO STAY HERE
There s so much to like about this novel: the village itself, stretched out alongside the French Broad River, its famous hotel now used to house German civilians during wartime; the man in charge with his many decisions to be made; the woman he meets and how-page by page, month by month, they fall in love.
-John Ehle, author of The Winter People and The Journey of August King
In A Short Time to Stay Here Terry Roberts shines a narrative light into a little known corner of modern history, German POWs in World War One in the Hot Springs resort in the mountains of North Carolina. This is a thrilling story of the clash of cultures, of mystery, espionage, revenge, and love. It is a riveting story you will not be able to put down or forget, bringing to life a particular Appalachian time and place, by one of the exciting new voices of Southern fiction.
-Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek and Brave Enemies
We have forgotten that in 1917 thousands of German sailors were our prisoners in the North Carolina mountains, but in this novel Roberts brings to life the historical circumstance and much more. He reveals how hatred-national or local-can lead to murder, but also how a man and woman can fall in love anywhere, anytime.
-Doris Betts, author of Souls Raised from the Dead and The Sharp Teeth of Love
Fiction in the mountain regions of North Carolina and in the mountain culture of the state have formed a significant part of southern literature from Thomas Wolfe through more recent novelists such as John Ehle, Robert Morgan, Fred Chappell, Charles Frazier, Wayne Caldwell and Ron Rash, to name only a few. With A Short Time to Stay Here, Terry Roberts joins this distinguished company.
-Jerry Leath Mills, Editor Emeritus of The Southern Literary Review
A Short Time to Stay Here is the real thing, a brilliant novel about a fascinating yet unknown chapter in history. There is something particularly evocative about its setting .I couldn t put it down while I was reading, and it has haunted me ever since.
-Lee Smith, author of Fair and Tender Ladies
Novelist and Asheville native Terry Roberts delivers a stirring, well-crafted novel that blends romance and wartime espionage to compulsively readable effect . Roberts digs deeper and presents a clash of cultures painted with an assured hand and authoritative knowledge.
- WNC Magazine
North Carolina author Terry Roberts offers a glimpse of a world off-kilter because of war.
- Charlotte Observer
Centers on the romance and the small-town dramas fanned by the unwanted [German] visitors . The characters are compelling and the historical context will engage North Carolinians and history buffs alike.
- Raleigh News and Observer
The joyfulness in reading Roberts novel comes first of all from identification with his appealing hero. Who doesn t love a recovering drunk with a heroic core and the capacity to tap a Dirty Harry demon? And from a plot that continues to get more complex as it boils.
-Rob Neufeld, Asheville Citizen Times
A SHORT TIME TO STAY HERE
TERRY ROBERTS
TURNER
Turner Publishing Company
Nashville, Tennessee
New York, New York
www.turnerpublishing.com
A Short Time To Stay Here
Copyright 2012, 2016 Terry Roberts. All rights reserved.
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design: Maddie Cothren
Book design: Glen Edelstein
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Roberts, Terry, 1956- author.
Title: A short time to stay here : a novel / Terry Roberts.
Description: Second edition. | Nashville, Tennessee : Turner Publishing Company, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016040057| ISBN 9781681629513 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781681629537 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1914-1918--United States--Fiction. | Hotelkeepers--North Carolina--Hot Springs--Fiction. | Concentration camps--North Carolina--Hot Springs--Fiction. | Prisoners of war--Fiction. | Women photographers--Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3618.O3164 S36 2016 | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040057
9781681629513
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER
Lee Roberts 1913-1982
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HOT SPRINGS
AND SURROUNDING AREA
WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
1917
Little birdy, little birdy ,
Come and sing to me your song -
Got a short time to stay here ,
And a long time to be gone .
-Traditional
A SHORT TIME TO STAY HERE
CHAPTER ONE
O f course I couldn t sleep.
I am a barren, haunted sleeper under the best of circumstances, and these circumstances were contrary-even for me, a man made of contradictions.
That was the first night that we had all two thousand, three-hundred and seventy aliens behind the wire, some six hundred of them under the roof of the Mountain Park itself. I was comatose by nine o clock, collapsed in my own sweaty clothes across my bed, but clear-headed by the dark middle watch. At two, I gave up sleep entirely, stripped, took a brief, cold sponge bath, and put on my dressing gown over trousers.
Then I did what I was accustomed to do in earlier, finer days. I walked the dark halls. All but invisible myself, I strolled back and forth on each long hallway, nodding to the guards at each lamp-lit end, stopping to listen and to watch. How were they different? I kept asking myself. These Germans: how different from the rich patrons we had served before the war? And how were we to serve them now, encaged as they were behind our newly-constructed fences?
I lived then on the top floor of the Mountain Park Hotel and had done so for the seven years since Major Jack Rumbough installed me as manager. Lived by myself in a double suite of rooms, 305-306, up under the beautiful, steep Mansard roof. Meaning that I dressed and bathed, slept and drank there. I actually lived my life across three floors, through all three-hundred-plus guest rooms, the offices, the cavernous ballroom, the gracious dining room. The lobby with its potted palms and rich, leather-bound chairs. The deep-delved basements, the high, narrow attics under the groaning roofs. The mile or so of porches, both glassed and open. The several more miles of hallways, with their chestnut chair rail and fine Scottish Rose details. When it breathed, the Mountain Park, I breathed; when I talked, it talked.
For seven years, I had grown into the old hotel, plank by plank, chair by chair, monogrammed linen napkin by monogrammed linen napkin, and it had grown into me. It so became me, so obsessed me, that every cook knew my favorite dishes, every bellhop knew to disguise how much wine I carried up to 305-306, and every flower girl knew to sell her leftover blooms to me.
So when I walked the halls at night, it was often in a kind of half-waking dream, most like when you roll over in your own bed, barely floating into some awareness of your body, touch yourself tentatively, pull at your twisted bed clothes, and slip again without murmur beneath the blanket of sleep.
I had walked those halls so many winter nights when the great hotel was all but empty, suspended high in Western North Carolina snow and ice: walked in an overcoat and boots, past the long rows of locked doors, stopping to listen at only a few-the rooms with winter guests-who would be comfortably asleep while I roamed in lonely guardianship.
I had walked the halls in hundreds of spring, summer, autumn nights as well, when many rooms were still flush with lamplight, and the halls themselves ferrying ever so many lost souls: drunk many of them, often desperate, even predatory men and women. The majority with more money stuffed into a pocket or beaded, glittering purse than any of my employees would see in a year.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, HOWEVER, June 15, 1917, was different. The hotel was full, yes, with at least two German merchant marine officers in every available room except for the few that contained only one very senior officer. And I walked, knowing that every door would be shut, every hallway carefully watched over by our newly hired guards. The hotel was as quiet as I d ever known it, even in winter, so quiet that I could hear the spring wind scrubbing tree branches together outside on the lower lawn. The muted pink colors of each Scottish Rose painted in geometric precision at regular intervals above the chair rail seemed almost restful, as if each angular blossom invited me to return to bed. But what had wakened me that night was something too intense for any flower.
A dream had pushed me up through the billows of sleep into swarming anxiety. Not a dream that had anything to do with German aliens or the high wire fences surrounding the lawn or the army orders I d spent the day studying. A dream of my own flesh-and-blood cousin: a man I d known off-and-on since we were both boys, who had grown up into his own cold maturity and become the sheriff of our Madison County, North Carolina. Several years before, Cousin Roy Robbins had pistol whipped a man nearly to death on the side porch of the Mountain Park, and I d been unable to stop him. A harmless man really, who worked for me in