Tales from the Southern Hotel

Book excerpt: Fifteen-year-old Mary Lou Peters lives in the historic Southern Hotel in fictional Asheville, Maryland. Her life-long dream is to take over the hotel that her parents kept the same for so long. She discovers that she has an amazing gift that throughout these eight stories helps her solve previously unsolved mysteries, many having to do with the hotel’s eventful past. In the beginning, she has no friends besides friends of her parents. She meets all kinds of interesting people—her best friend Robby, energetic Julie, and even a few ghosts. Like everyone else, tragedies, celebrations, good and bad times are a part of Mary Lou’s life, and the hotel’s past. These stories take place in a hotel that is based on the real Southern Hotel in North Carolina. In July, 2005, I toured the hotel when it was for sale. The building and the history inspired this historical fiction collection about a mid-20th century family living in a prosperous small-town hotel.