Once in a generation there is produced a stirring, exciting story set against the background of a great hotel. This is such a book. The scene is the St. Gregory Hotel in the lusty, tumultuous city of New Orleans. Time: 1964. Through five eventful days we share the fortunes, conflicts and intimacies affecting the hotel, its guests, its echelon of management. Across the novel's pages stride memorable characters: Warren Trent, the St. Gregory's bigoted, irascible owner; his assistant, Christine Francis, vivacious, ardent, yet shadowed by personal tragedy; the young general manager, Peter McDermott, competent and honorable, but a prisoner of his own past discretion; Marsha Preyscott, the teen-age New Orleans heiress, ruthless in attaining her own desires; and also an engaging sous-chef and organizational genius, an embittered young African-American man, a despicable bell captain and purveyor of vice, and a humble disposer of garbage who proves to be a keeper of the hotel's conscience. And the guests...
