“The Listeners” by Maggie Stiefvater

A relatively minor (though not to those affected) consideration when two nations go to war is what there is to be done with the diplomats. You have hundreds of enemy nationals on your hands, whom you have promised safe passage to, but how to make that happen when you are at war? And what about your own diplomats now in enemy hands?

The answer, when the United States joined World War II, was to stick the Axis diplomats in hotels under guard until arrangements could be made via the Swiss to swap them for the American diplomats in Germany, Japan, and Italy. This was not a quick or simple process, and so these diplomats (and their families, and support staff and their families) were left in these hotels for months. Maggie Stiefvater has taken these historical events (and many genuine anecdotes) and crafted a narrative of the fictional Avallon Hotel.

The Avallon is a luxury hotel on a West Virginia mountaintop, clearly inspired by the famous Greenbrier. The chief protagonist is June Hudson, a local who rose to become the hotel’s general manager. The hotel is an outpost of a glitzy, glamorous world far removed from the coal country surrounding it, and though June has thrived as almost an adopted daughter of the rich New York family that owns the Avallon, she is still West Virginian. Her world is turned upside down when, in December 1941, the FBI (led by the co-protagonist, Agent Tucker Minnick) shows up to inform her that hundreds of Axis diplomats are about to be housed in her luxury hotel for an indeterminate length of time. June isn’t happy about this, but she and her staff are very proud of the luxury offered by the Avallon and are determined that will continue whoever her guests are.

And though everyone is being very polite and, well, diplomatic, there are tensions. Not all of the Axis nations get along, despite their military alliance. The staff are professionals, and proud to be so, but there are sons and brothers being drafted, and one staff member lost a son already at Pearl Harbor. There are family members of diplomatic staff who have never lived anywhere but America and not happy about being shipped off to Nazi Germany. And even one of the highest ranking German diplomats has a problem: his daughter is nonverbal - I am assuming autistic - and people with mental differences weren’t exactly treated with compassion by the Nazis. He seems convinced his status will protect her, but his wife is far more doubtful.

While all this is playing out, June is dealing with her own status straddling two very different worlds. Agent Minnick, himself of West Virginia coal miner stock, is a complication she doesn’t need. And what is right and wrong, to say nothing of what is treasonous, isn’t so very clear.

So why is this being reviewed as a fantasy book? It’s solidly magical realism. The water in the hotel is known as “sweetwater” - mineral water, supposedly healing, not necessarily sweet at all. The sweetwater is sensitive to the moods of the Avallon, and affects those moods in turn. June has to keep a close eye on the water if she is to keep the Avallon the luxurious place it is meant to be.

My big complaint with this book turned out not to be. For most of the book, it seemed like the author had lost sight of the fact that these are Nazis we’re talking about. It’s an easy trap to fall in to - assuming you were someone they were willing to view as fully human, the Nazis could be quite polite and civilized. Most of the staff of the Avallon, and June herself, fit into the Nazi worldview as either Aryan or not far off from it, and therefore getting along is entirely possible. Credit to the author though: she didn’t lose sight of what these people are. Things were just papered over, until they weren’t.

A good read, and a challenging one. Strong recommendation.