Count the nights by stars : a novel / Michelle Shocklee.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A 2023 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award-winner!Count your nights by stars, not shadows. Count your life with smiles, not tears. 1961. After a longtime resident at Nashville's historic Maxwell House Hotel suffers a debilitating stroke, Audrey Whitfield is tasked with cleaning out the reclusive woman's room. There, she discovers an elaborate scrapbook filled with memorabilia from the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Love notes on the backs of unmailed postcards inside capture Audrey's imagination with hints of a forbidden romance . . . and troubling revelations about the disappearance of young women at the exposition. Audrey enlists the help of a handsome hotel guest as she tracks down clues and information about the mysterious "Peaches" and her regrets over one fateful day, nearly sixty-five years earlier. 1897. Outspoken and forward-thinking Priscilla Nichols isn't willing to settle for just any man. She's still holding out hope for love when she meets Luca Moretti on the eve of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Charmed by the Italian immigrant's boldness, Priscilla spends time exploring the wonderous sights of the expo with Luca--until a darkness overshadows the monthslong event. Haunted by a terrible truth, Priscilla and Luca are sent down separate paths as the night's stars fade into dawn.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville is past its glory days, and Audrey Whitfield is bored at the front desk. (She also takes care of her brother Emmett.) Audrey's boredom evaporates, however, when reclusive longtime Maxwell House resident Priscilla Nichols is found barely breathing. Audrey and her friend, civil rights lawyer Jason Sumner, discover a scrapbook from the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, which opens a door into the past that someone will do anything to close again. The historical mystery leads to 1897, when Priscilla, the daughter of a wealthy railroad investor, is expected to marry within her ethnicity and social station. Priscilla, however, is more interested in women's suffrage and a gallant Italian servant named Luca Moretti. After a tragedy involving Luca's sister, Priscilla finds her purpose by daring to step outside of what's expected. VERDICT Shocklee's (Under the Tulip Tree) novel is like the coffee at the Maxwell House: good to the last drop. Read-alikes include other exposition stories such as Jocelyn Green's Shadows of the White City and Kim Vogel Sawyer's A Silken Thread.--Christine Barth

Publishers Weekly Review

Shocklee (Under the Tulip Tree) delivers a riveting historical romance set at the famed Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tenn. In 1961, Audrey Whitfield, daughter of the Maxwell's manager, returns home from college to care for her disabled brother and grief-stricken father after her mother's death. When one of the hotel's elderly residents, Priscilla Nichols, becomes ill and moves into a nursing home, it falls to Audrey to sort through the woman's belongings to clear the room. Audrey uncovers a scrapbook containing mementos from the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition and a series of love letters describing the Exposition's first night, including the disappearance of a young immigrant woman. The letters slowly bring Priscilla's life into focus: her reluctant courtship with a repugnant Southern aristocrat, her ill-fated romance with a poor Italian immigrant, and the dark injustice she discovers hiding in her hometown. The narrative shifts between timelines: in 1961, Audrey investigates the decades-old disappearance with the help of an attractive civil rights lawyer-in-training staying at the Maxwell, and in 1897, Priscilla falls in love and stumbles upon a terrible secret on the eve of the Exposition. Shocklee masterfully weaves mystery and romance in this spellbinding study of the horrors of xenophobia and the bravery of those who stand up to it. This is a timely and expertly crafted tale. (Mar.)