Motel Stories

Will Torphy's elegant narration creates a gauzy veil of tears through which we view a poignant, if haphazard, community of immigrants, down-and-outers, weirdos, and dreamers who use the Sunset Inn, a dilapidated Hollywood motel, as staging ground for their personal crises and epiphanies. Torphy loves his characters, but it's a tough love that finds the poetry of real life in their desperate words and actions." —MARC JAMPOLE, Author of The Brothers Silver "Motel Stories" takes an empathetic deep dive into the eccentricities and troubled lives of guests at the fictional Sunset Inn, a seedy motel on Hollywood Boulevard. Twenty linked tales include a man who dances with dolls, an immigrant couple from opposing sides of a civil war celebrating their honeymoon, a disgraced politician in hiding, an addict mother facing a fateful reunion with her long-lost brother. Four related stories complete the collection: a teenage boy flees his hometown to escape scandal and persecution, a Filipina internet bride struggles for autonomy in suburban America, a female impersonator supersedes her once-glamorous mentor, a gay gallery owner confronts his own delinquent past when his troubled teenage nephew visits.