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.