Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon Hotel skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile. Meanwhile FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats’ secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal. June has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.
Melding history and fantasy in fiction can be tricky, but Stiefvater deftly pulls off this particular magic ... While the plot has its predictable aspects, they’re a secondary consideration when we’re so enthralled ... Stiefvater’s prose...is as pungent as the sweetwater, with a snap that suggests the whimsy of a veteran storyteller. Sometimes it’s a bit over the top ... But mostly it’s just right, shifting from a humorous to an elegiac mode without missing a beat.
The Listeners, like all best novels, defies easy compartmentalization ... Listening, at all times, is a vividly drawn protagonist, June Hudson ... We are led both to contend with and understand the complexities of the human heart.
Stiefvater has brought her magical prose with her to her first adult novel ... Humanizing and detail-oriented, The Listeners is a story about both people management and self-regulation ... It was well-researched and tactful, handling dark issues with sensitivity and embedding colorful detail onto each page.
