In the Shadow of the Greenbrier

February 1, 2024
In 1992, 23-year-old Jordan Barber, a local reporter for the Washington Post, receives an anonymous letter suggesting there's a secret buried underneath the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia. He remembers that his mother, Doreen, grew up there, but she warns him off pursuing the lead. In 1958, 18-year-old Doree Zelner is obsessed with leaving White Sulfur Springs for college and getting away from her tempestuous mother, Sylvia. In 1942, Sylvia Zelner, newly emigrated from Poland and with a new marriage and newborn baby, is called to the Greenbrier to make clothes for an Italian diplomat stationed there. In 1909, Sol Zelner escapes service in the tsar's army and lands in Baltimore, where he gets a job as a peddler, serving the mountain towns of Virginia and West Virginia. The Zelners cannot afford to stay at the tony Greenbrier, but the resort looms large, the source of secrets for each generation of this Jewish family. In her debut, Matchar deftly weaves the four time lines together to reach a satisfying, emotionally resonant conclusion.

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February 15, 2024
Four generations of a Jewish family find their fates tied to a mysterious and glamorous hotel. The historic resort in Matchar's latest is a real property in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Its secret, chronicled here, has long been disclosed. But although this renders some of the book's mystery anticlimactic, the real heart of the story is Matchar's examination of the hardships faced by four generations of a Jewish family in rural America. Far from the crowded tenements of the big cities, the Zelners must contend with antisemitism, poverty, and painful secrets in a small, isolated, and often hostile community. Matchar reveals the journeys of each generation, the Zelners' trials interwoven with the fate of the magnificent hotel, a magnet for the wealthy and famous. The gentle patriarch, Sol, starts his life in America as a door-to-door peddler, then opens a general store in the shadow of the hotel. His daughter-in-law, Sylvia, a dissatisfied immigrant from Poland accustomed to finer things, works at the hotel during World War II, when it becomes a luxurious camp for German and Italian diplomats (an affair with one of the latter tempts the married Sylvia, who has just had her first child). Later, her daughter, Doree, embarks on a romance with a mysterious man working at the hotel while Sylvia's son, Alan, is convinced there's a conspiracy behind some new construction there. In the 1990s, Doree's son, Jordan, a Washington Post reporter, sets out to uncover the truth. Some storylines turn out to be more compelling than others, as is often the case with multigenerational novels, with some dubious developments in Doree's narrative and Jordan's segments feeling superfluous except as a means to an end. But Sol's and Sylvia's plotlines allow Matchar to offer a glimpse into American Jewish history. An interesting story about antisemitism, family secrets, and Jewish life in rural America.

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