The year is 1921, the start of Prohibition. Mafia runaway Alice "Nobody" James has escaped trouble in Harlem by traveling cross-country by train while bleeding from a bullet wound. Max, a black porter, intervenes and checks the white Alice into the Paragon Hotel in Portland, Oregon. The hotel is an exclusively African-American sanctuary in a segregated city under siege by the Ku Klux Klan. There, Alice meets a host of compatriots who soon become like family as they bond together to search for one of their own, a biracial boy they fear may have fallen into the hands of the Klan. 

With her sixth novel, stage actress-turned-novelist Faye, known for her Edgar-nominated Jane Eyre spoof Jane Steele, offers a surprising historical mystery that addresses America's sexism, racism and anti-immigrant white power movements. 

"I always write about something that's pissing me off right now," Faye says by phone from her New York home. "I find parallels to what was happening a very long time ago, because I don't think anybody would be particularly interested if I just stood on a soapbox and said, ‘Racism is bad.' But if I can set stories in other time periods, it's sort of like Shakespeare setting Macbeth out of town: ‘Don't get confused, this is not about you—this is those Scottish guys!'"

Alice's escape to Portland allows Faye to write about a piece of history that she has long hoped to ponder in fiction. Born in San Jose, California, Faye moved with her family to Longview, Washington, a small town close to Portland, when she was 6 and remained there for 12 years. The move from her racially diverse San Jose birthplace to the predominantly white Longview revealed to Faye a dark section of American history—the Pacific Northwest's deeply racist roots. The original Oregon settlers envisioned a utopia free from crime, poverty—and any nonwhite persons. Prior to statehood, any blacks who refused to leave the territory were sentenced to flogging every six months. In 1870, Oregon refused to ratify the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed voting rights to people of color, and didn't correct this error until 1959. For black people, Oregon was hell with only a few havens. One of these was Portland's Golden West Hotel, upon which the Paragon Hotel is based.

Along with exploring present-day social and cultural upheavals through a historical lens, The Paragon Hotel also allowed Faye to re-create the spoken language of 1921, both in Harlem and Portland. Faye proudly admits to having a passion for historical accuracy.

"That's why this is a love letter. It's very much not just a quest for identity but a quest to actually love that identity."

"Slang is very, very much a part of my research process," she says. "If you're just looking through the boilerplate slang of the 1920s, you're going to be finding a lot of words that didn't really come into vogue until 1925, -6, -7. That was really the height of the flapper era, and I was not interested in those words; I was only interested in how you spoke in 1921."

Lacking a lexicon embedded in the arts and music of the pre-flapper era, Faye struggled until she stumbled upon an unlikely helping hand from someone who also knew how to sling the slang. "I was at a loss for quite some time," she says, "until I attended a writer's residency for a month down in Key West, Florida. There is tons of stuff from Hemingway down there for obvious reasons, and I found a huge volume with all of his [World War I] war correspondence." She explains that a large percentage of the slang in The Paragon Hotel comes straight out of Hemingway's 1918 letters.

Faye also credits her own years on stage with giving her the ear to recognize slang and use it effectively in her fiction. "I've never taken a creative writing class," she says. "I was trained as an actor and worked as a professional stage actor for 10 years, and I was also trained as a singer, and there's a real lilt in the '20s stuff. I think that the rhythm of it is almost as important as some of the words. Even where they're talking about very serious things, there's this glib overtone to where they're even replacing words with almost nonsense words. It's fascinating."

To voice the Portland perspective, Faye created Blossom Fontaine, the Paragon's residential club chanteuse, whose sultry, outgoing stage personality belies the inner turmoil and discomfort she and many of her friends feel about America's history of racism and sexism.

"In the case of Blossom, whose life has been defined by what society says, the question of who she is has been so important her whole life that when she meets Nobody, who has been taking advantage of hiding in plain sight, it's such an asset to her," Faye says. "Nobody lived in such a dangerous environment that she didn't spend a lot of time really sitting down and defining herself. Blossom, on the other hand, has been so assertive and determined about who she is and so locked into a system. You've got two women who are coming at it from completely different directions. That's why this is a love letter. It's very much not just a quest for identity but a quest to actually love that identity."

Will we see a sequel to The Paragon Hotel?

"I would love to say yes, but I never really know. So far, this is a standalone, but I wouldn't rule it out," Faye replies. "However, at the moment, what I'm working on is turning Hamlet into a modern-day crime novel. The working title? The King of Infinite Space. I'm very excited about it."

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by Anna Ty.

★ The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye
Reading groups will enjoy untangling the threads of Lyndsay Faye’s historical whodunit The Paragon Hotel. In 1921, Alice James, who’s been mixed up with New York mobsters, comes to Portland, Oregon, bearing a bullet wound. Alice, who is white, takes shelter at the Paragon Hotel—a sort of safe house for the city’s African American population, which has been harassed by the Ku Klux Klan. When Davy Lee, a multiracial boy who’s a favorite at the hotel, disappears, Alice pretends to be a journalist researching his case. Along the way, she crosses paths with a wide cast of characters, including Blossom Fontaine, a nightclub singer with a questionable past; wealthy Evelina Vaughan, a white woman with stakes in the boy’s disappearance; and an assortment of belligerent cops and racist thugs. Faye’s smart, stylish and suspenseful tale tackles timeless topics of race and gender.

Black Is the Body by Emily Bernard
In her powerful collection of personal essays, Bernard reflects upon her experiences as a black woman in America, sharing poignant reminiscences of her Southern childhood and insights into her life in the place she now calls home—the predominately white state of Vermont.

North of Dawn by Nuruddin Farah
This piercing novel finds Somalian immigrant Mugdi living a quiet life in Oslo until his troubled son, Dhaqaneh, commits suicide. When Dhaqaneh’s strict Islamist widow and children come to live with Mugdi and his wife, the process of assimilation changes them forever.

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
In this dystopian tale, Lia, Grace and Sky live apart from society on an island with their parents. They receive no outsiders except for women in need of a ritual that protects them against the world’s poisons. 

Last Stories by William Trevor
Last Stories is a stunning final collection from the beloved Irish author (1928–2016). Trevor’s unembellished prose stands in striking contrast to the weight and complexity of the ideas he explores, including mortality and the nature of love.

It's 1921, and "Nobody" Alice James is racing by rail as far from New York as possible, finally landing at the only all-black hotel in Portland, OR. Residents are understandably suspicious of this white woman—the Ku Klux Klan is in town. From the two-time Edgar nominee.

In 1921, Alice "Nobody" James, who is white, escapes her life as a New York Mafia gun moll with a bullet-shaped souvenir in her side. Hopping a train to anywhere, she meets African American train porter Max, who notes her condition and guides her to the Paragon Hotel, the only all-black hotel in Portland, OR. The owner, Dr. Pendleton, treats Alice even though it's dangerous for black men to associate with white women. So begins Alice's stay at the Paragon, where the residents have their own problems, with the Ku Klux Klan gaining popularity and dead animals left at their door. Alice uses her former skills to aid in the most heart-wrenching problem of all: finding the missing mixed-race boy Davy Lee before the Klan does. Faye ("Timothy Wilde" series; Jane Steele) has meticulously researched the racial tensions and social culture of 1920s Portland, basing the Paragon Hotel on the real Golden West Hotel. Her prose is lush with details, from rich descriptions of the hotel rooms and a diva's Paris gown to citing interesting colloquialisms. VERDICT A treat for those who enjoyed Faye's other novels, as well as fans of historical crime/thrillers.—Jennifer Funk, McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, IL

Faye (Jane Steele) takes a simultaneously exuberant and weighty approach to historical mystery in her memorable latest. It's 1921, and Alice James, known as Nobody for her uncanny ability to continually reinvent herself while remaining almost totally forgettable, arrives—complete with bullet wound—in Portland, Ore., after fleeing some bloody history with the New York mob. There, the wounded Nobody, who is white, is taken by a kind and discreet (not to mention attractive) black Pullman porter she'd befriended on the cross-country train ride to the Paragon Hotel, a haven for Portland's small and increasingly besieged black population. The black community's anxieties mount when a young boy—who's been brought up communally by the Paragon's residents—goes missing. Nobody poses as a journalist while becoming fond of the Paragon's inhabitants, particularly chanteuse Blossom Fontaine. As Nobody investigates the boy's disappearance, she is well served by her ability to observe while remaining unnoticed. Nobody gains access to Blossom's many secrets, as well as those of brilliant-but-fragile white philanthropist Evelina Vaughan, who has her own interest in the missing boy. What starts as a bit of a Prohibition-era crime romp becomes increasingly relevant as issues of mental illness, race, and gender identity take on greater significance. In addition to illuminating Portland's unsavory history of racism, Faye's novel vividly illustrates how high the stakes could—and can still—be for those claiming and defending their own identities. (Jan.)