A Short Time to Stay Here - (Stephen Robbins Chronicles) 2nd Edition by Terry Roberts (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The summer of 1917 should have been a summer like any other. Stephen Robbins should have been doing the same thing he'd been doing for years past. As a young boy he'd fled his life in a secluded mountain cove and risen through the ranks to become the manager of the South's finest resort, the elegant Mountain Park Hotel. By all rights, he should have spent this summer as host to some of the wealthiest gentry on the East Coast. Hans Ruser, German Commodore of the world's largest and most luxurious cruise liner, Vaderland, should have been sailing yet again with his elite passengers to the far corners of the world. And Anna Ulmann, captivating and beautiful, should have been at home in her New York mansion planning yet another lavish dinner party for her famous husband and his rich and powerful friends. She should have idled away her spare time by taking perfectly staged photographic portraits of the very same people.

But war will change everything that should have been in that summer of 1917- the U.S. enters WWI and the Mountain Park Hotel is pressed into service as an internment camp for over 2,000 German nationals, including Ruser and his men. This sudden collision of lives and cultures in the small town of Hot Springs, North Carolina is both frightening and exhilarating. And the unlikely alliance that forms between Hans Ruser and Stephen Robbins will force each to decide just how far they are willing to go to keep peace in the beautiful and isolated mountains. Feisty Anna Ulmann, seeking to assert her independence in a male-dominated world, mysteriously flees south to devote her life to documentary photography. When she steps off the train at the Hot Springs depot one sultry summer day, she could not have imagined the passionate journey that will result when she matches wits with Stephen Robbins. Haunted by demons both past and present, they will face heartbreaking tragedy. Yet together they will discover the true meaning of imprisonment and escape.

Review Quotes

"In A Short Time to Stay Here Terry Roberts shines a narrative light into a little known corner of modern history, German POWs in World War One in the Hot Springs resort in the mountains of North Carolina. This is a thrilling story of the clash of cultures, of mystery, espionage, revenge, and love. It is a riveting story you will not be able to put down or forget, bringing to life a particular Appalachian time and place, by one of the exciting new voices of Southern fiction."-Robert Morgan Author of Gap Creek and Brave Enemies

"A Short Time to Stay Here is the real thing, a brilliant novel about a fascinating yet unknown chapter in history...Highly original yet authentic characters populate this page-turner with its themes of love, violence, espionage, and the clash between cultures. There is something particularly evocative about its setting....I couldn't put it down while I was reading, and it has haunted me ever since."-Lee Smith, author of Fair and Tender Ladies

"There's so much to like about this novel: the village itself, stretched out alongside the French Broad River, its famous hotel now used to house German civilians during wartime; the man in charge with his many decisions to be made; the woman he meets and how-page by page, month by month, they fall in love."-John Ehle, author of The Winter People and The Journey of August King

"A little known World War I incident-the detention of German internees in Western North Carolina-has given Terry Roberts the background for a vital, absorbing novel. His characters, largely local, bring their own conflicts and concerns to the narrative, which throughout an evolving love story sheds light on darker events."-Elizabeth Spencer, author of Voice at the Back Door and Light in the Piazza

"Terry Roberts brings an obscure bit of WWI history to vivid life. A tiny mountain town in North Carolina, a batch of German detainees quartered at a once-grand hotel, and the inevitable conflicts that ensue provide an intricately layered backdrop to a beautifully imagined and timeless love story. Read it for the history; read it for the setting; but, most of all, read it to make the acquaintance of these fascinating characters."-Vicki Lane, author of Under the Skin and The Day of Small Things

"Fiction in the mountain regions of North Carolina and in the mountain culture of the state have formed a significant part of southern literature from Thomas Wolfe through more recent novelists such as John Ehle, Robert Morgan, Fred Chappell, Charles Frazier, Wayne Caldwell and Ron Rash, to name only a few. With A Short Time to Stay Here, Terry Roberts joins this distinguished company. His story of love on the fringes of a distant yet oddly intrusive war, is brilliantly plotted and rendered in a style both lyrical and concretely realistic, flawless in characterization and with an authoritative command of the history that enfolds it. One suspects, and hopes, that there is much more to follow from this gifted writer."-Jerry Leath Mills, Editor Emeritus, Studies in Philology

"We have forgotten that in 1917 thousands of German sailors were our prisoners in the North Carolina mountains, but in this novel Roberts brings to life both the historical circumstance and much more. With psychological skill, he reveals how hatred-national or local-can lead to murder, but also how a man and woman can fall in love anywhere, anytime."-Doris Betts, author of Souls Raised from the Dead and The Sharp Teeth of Love

"Novelist and Asheville native Terry Roberts delivers a stirring, well-crafted...novel that blends romance and wartime espionage to compulsively readable effect.... Roberts digs deeper and presents a clash of cultures painted with an assured hand and authoritative knowledge."-WNC Magazine