Hotel
Moscow
By: Talia Carner
Released June 2, 2015
William Morrow
Blurb
From
the author of Jerusalem Maiden comes a mesmerizing,
thought-provoking novel that tells the riveting story of an American woman—the
daughter of Holocaust survivors—who travels to Russia shortly after the fall of
communism, and finds herself embroiled in a perilous mafia conspiracy that
could irrevocably destroy her life.
Brooke Fielding, a
thirty-eight year old New York investment manager and daughter of Jewish
Holocaust survivors, finds her life suddenly upended in late September 1993
when her job is unexpectedly put in jeopardy. Brooke accepts an invitation to
join a friend on a mission to Moscow to teach entrepreneurial skills to Russian
business women, which will also give her a chance to gain expertise in the new,
vast emerging Russian market. Though excited by the opportunity to save her job
and be one of the first Americans to visit Russia after the fall of communism,
she also wonders what awaits her in the country that persecuted her mother just
a generation ago.
Inspired by the women she
meets, Brooke becomes committed to helping them investigate the crime that
threatens their businesses. But as the uprising of the Russian parliament
against President Boris Yeltsin turns Moscow into a volatile war zone, Brooke
will find that her involvement comes at a high cost. For in a city where
“capitalism” is still a dirty word, where neighbors spy on neighbors and the
new economy is in the hands of a few dangerous men, nothing Brooke does goes
unnoticed—and a mistake in her past may now compromise her future.
A moving, poignant, and
rich novel, Hotel Moscow is an eye-opening portrait of
post-communist Russia and a profound exploration of faith, family, and
heritage.
Link to Follow Tour: http://www.tastybooktours.com/2015/05/hotel-moscow-by-talia-carner.html
Excerpt
PART 1: Thursday, September 30, 1993
CHAPTER
ONE
The plane had emptied by the time Brooke Fielding
strode down the ramp tube of the Moscow airport, her Burberry raincoat and
overnight case strapped with an elastic cord to a wheeled carrier. In the
narrow, windowless Jetway, the two last passengers followed right behind her,
men lugging clear plastic bags that sported the Duty Free Shop logo and were
stuffed with cigarettes, whiskey, perfumes, and a variety of cheese and sausages.
The significance of the moment billowed in
Brooke’s chest: she, an American, was arriving in Russia a mere twenty-one
months after the collapse of Communism. Like a pioneer, she’d get a taste of
the sights, sounds and flavors of a country few Americans had visited since the
days of the Czars. Even though she’d had a sense of “there” through her
parents’ Eastern European upbringing, she expected the experience awaiting her
in Moscow would be unlike anything she’d ever had before. On Monday, when her company’s
new management had ordered her to take her unused vacation days, she’d called
her friend Amanda Cheng to let her know that she had become available to join
Amanda’s women’s mission. She would use her business skills to help Russian
women vault over decades of stagnation.
At the sound of swooshing behind her, Brooke
glanced back to see that the far end of the skyway had detached from the
airplane and was closing with a soft whine. Brooke hurried along, pushed to a
faster pace by the two men at her heels, when a small, triumphant voice inside
her burst out. Russia, I’m returning on
behalf of all my millions of nameless fellow Jews lost on your soil. You didn’t
destroy us, after all. She lifted her head. I’m here.
This was a new Russia, Brooke reminded herself,
different from the Russia that had experimented with its people’s lives and
minds. This new Russia was fighting for liberty, placing the individual’s right
for happiness over the collective’s good, and as it struggled to free itself
from bigotry, so should she. The negative, judgmental attitudes merely
reflected her mother’s prejudices.
Brooke was nearing the door separating the Jetway
from the main terminal when a guard approached it from inside. His eyes hooded
with boredom, a machine gun dangling from the strap across his chest, he
unfastened a door stopper and swung the door shut, locking it, then turned to
leave.
“Hey!” Brooke waved, rushing forward. “Wait!”
But the guard just tossed her a blank look
through the glass, and walked away.
“I’m still here!” she called to his retreating
back. She banged on the door.
“They have orders.” The younger of the two men at
her heels spoke in heavily accented English. He wore a rumpled blue suit with a
wrinkled open-collar shirt. The older man shook his head of dandelion-fuzz hair
and rested his shopping bags on the floor.
From outside rose the hum of a forklift and the
thuds of luggage falling onto a conveyor belt. “Welcome to Russia,” Brooke
muttered. She adjusted her watch for the time zone. Seven o’clock in the
morning was midnight
yesterday in New York. She banged again on the glass door, but could see the
empty corridor beyond. Amanda and the other ten women executives recruited for
this “Citizen Diplomats” mission must have reached passport control. They would
be worried.
The hair falling on Brooke’s cheeks smelled of
microwaved airplane food and re-circulated air. She tucked a strand behind her
ear and took a deep breath. Eventually, someone would let her out; no one got
stuck at an airport terminal forever. She glanced at her companions. The two
Russian men stood motionless, as if forbidden to even lean against the wall for
support.
Brooke hated losing control, which had been
happening all week. Last Friday afternoon she was called to an unscheduled
staff meeting at which her investment firm’s CEO cheerfully reported that they
had been taken over. His faux optimism only made Brooke wonder how big a golden
parachute the new owners must have opened for him. He was no doubt making a
soft landing into a pile of several million dollars. She left the meeting in a
daze and ran off to the synagogue for the start of Yom Kippur. In observance of
the day her parents had never honored, she absented herself from her
colleagues’ frantic phone calls until Sunday night.
The uncertainties she and her colleagues pondered
on Sunday were sealed Monday when The
Wall Street Journal speculated that the takeover would probably result in a
bloodbath for the current employees. That afternoon, Brooke and other
executives were told to take off two full weeks, a gambit to flush out fraud by
keeping the staff away from their accounts so they could be examined
unhampered.
Not even allowed to visit the office, Brooke
would be absent when she most needed to impress the new management, when her
clients would be introduced to new teams she had never met, leaving her out of
the loop. Never before had she experienced the insecurity of a job suddenly in
jeopardy. Her CEO, her mentor, had betrayed her.
But adding expertise on Russia’s new economy
would help her keep her hard-won executive position. Not only did Brooke have
the opportunity to help Russian women on this trip, but she could poke her nose
into business ventures of this nation untangling itself from a seventy-year
time warp. She would return to New York brimming with new ideas and investment
opportunities. She might even refresh the Russian language that must be lying
dormant in her grey cells; she had heard it often enough in her childhood when
her mother and her mother’s friends still spoke it among themselves.
This trip would be a win-win situation, she had
decided that Monday night.
On Tuesday, the mission’s Russian host had
arranged for Brooke’s visa while she splurged for gifts the group could provide
the women they would be counseling. On Wednesday she had boarded the flight,
and now, Thursday morning, here she was, stuck in Moscow airport.
The foregoing is excerpted from HOTEL MOSCOW by Talia Carner. All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be used or reproduced without written permission from HarperCollins Publishers,
195
Broadway New York, NY 10007
Author Info
Traveling around the
world has brought Talia Carner, former publisher of Savvy Woman
magazine, a business consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and a speaker at
international women’s economic forums, to find the stories right within
herself. In her new novel, Hotel Moscow, she continues her mission to save and
empower women. Carner hit the ground running with her first novel, Puppet Child
(The Top 10 Favorite First Novels 2002,) followed by China Doll, (her platform
for 2007 U.N. presentation against infanticide,) and Jerusalem Maiden (winner
of Forward National Literature Award,) and now shares her passion for social
justice and human rights domestically and globally. She explores the
individual’s spirit as it clashes with the power of religion, social
conformity, or political upheaval. She lives in New York with her husband.
Please visit her at www.taliacarner.com.
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Thank you for hosting HOTEL MOSCOW!
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