Author(s): Elinor Lipman

Fiction

It's 1962, and Natalie Marx is shocked when her mother receives this reply to her enquiry about summer accommodation in Vermont: 'Our guests who feel most comfortable here, and return year after year, are Gentiles.' It was not complicated, as her mother pointed out. 'They had a hotel; they didn't want Jews. We were Jews.' For the intrepid twelve-year-old Natalie, the words are an infuriating, irresistible challenge. She manages to wangle an invitation to join a friend on holiday there - and, as her obsession begins with the family that has excluded her, she sets in a train of events which will change her life, and which will tie her forever to the eccentric family who run the Inn at Lake Devine.