Guterson keeps his protagonists busy discovering clues to the hotel’s central mystery, a missing book, and the decades-old disappearance of the proprietor’s sister, who apparently dabbled in the black arts. The vast hotel library (run by a Ugandan-born librarian with a bun and a fondness for old-fashioned card catalogs) is full of potential surprises. The hotel’s kindly proprietor, a descendent of the original founder, seems to have his own magical talents. A grim pair of guests, protective of the large trunk they claim is full of books, seem to have Elizabeth in their sights. Guterson provides readers a treat: mean caregivers à la the Dursleys a vast, luxurious hotel where oddities abound a new word-puzzle–loving friend, Freddy Knox (with black hair and dark brown skin from his Mexican mother his father’s heritage goes unmentioned) a shrouded history for Winterhouse and sinister circumstances. When her guardian aunt and uncle depart for a vacation, leaving only a train ticket and three $1 bills duct-taped to the door, Elizabeth embarks on an extraordinary adventure. Young Elizabeth Somers’ predilection for puzzles is put to the test when she spends a Christmas break alone at the enormous Winterhouse Hotel.Įlizabeth, white, an orphan, and a devoted reader, has a recently discovered magical gift of extrasensory awareness and anticipation.
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