I really should make more of an effort to read Lyndsay Faye’s novels because I usually end up enjoying them. The first novel of hers that I read was The Gods of Gotham, which is set in mid-19^th century New York and is about a police officer who investigates a serial killer. It is a fascinating story about the Five Points district, but I will admit I was not a fan of the ending. I have also read Jane Steele, which reimagines Jane Eyre as a serial killer. Sounds like something that would make Charlotte Brontë roll over in her grave, but I thought it was really good. Now I have read The Paragon Hotel, which is set in one of my favourite time periods, the 1920s Prohibition Era, and is about the Italian mafia in New York and Black people living in Portland, Oregon as the Ku Klux Klan begins to make its presence known.

The Paragon Hotel opens with the novel’s heroine, a white woman named Alice James, on a train to Portland after fleeing New York City with a bullet wound and $50,000 cash in her suitcase. When she arrives in Portland, she is assisted by a Black Pullman porter named Max, who brings her to the Paragon Hotel, a Black owned hotel. Once at the hotel, the resident Black doctor (keeping in mind that a Black doctor touching a white patient at this time was a lynching offense) patches Alice up and saves her life.

The hotel’s residents are uneasy about having a white person staying at their establishment, but they are kind and hospitable, so they do not kick Alice out. In order to pacify the suspicious police officers who often raid the hotel, Alice pretends to be a reporter writing an article about Black owned and operated businesses. She befriends the charming singer Blossom Fontaine, who also lives at the Paragon, as well as some of the other residents. Not long after her arrival, a young Black boy goes missing. Alice decides to help her new friends by investigating his disappearance, which turns out to be a dangerous endeavour because of the Ku Klux Klan, who are suspected of kidnapping and murdering the boy.

I found myself questioning the authenticity of Alice so readily befriending Black people considering the novel is set in the US in the 1920s, but Alice is the daughter of an Italian immigrant, and she grew up in Harlem. I learned from this novel that Italian immigrants and Black people coexisted in Harlem during this time. Italians were also discriminated against, and the Mafia were too busy going after each other to really care about anyone else.

The novel jumps back and forth between Alice’s past in Harlem and her present in Portland. We learn that she was in love with a Black man while she lived in Harlem, and we see her fall in love with Max in Portland. The Paragon Hotel tackles some heavy topics (did you know that until 1926, long after the end of the Civil War, it was illegal for Black people to live in Oregon?), but it is an entertaining read all because of Alice and Blossom. Gun molls and flappers are ab-so-lute-ly the cat’s meow. Both characters are strong, independent women who buck societal expectations for women at the time, and neither of them are above putting themselves in danger for the people that they care about. I was actually a little sad when I finished reading The Paragon Hotel; I would have loved to spend more time with them.