num_pages: 208
description: Powerfully inventive and atmospheric a modern gothic story of nine young women sent to work at a remote Alpine hotel and what happens when one of them goes missingWith toiletries hairbands and notebooks in her bag and at her mother's instruction nineteen-year-old Rafa leaves her parents' home and the seaside town she grew up in. Out the train window she sees the lit-up mountains and perfect trees--and the Olympic Hotel waiting for her perched above the small village of Strega. There she and eight other young women receive the stiff black uniforms of seasonal workers and move into their shared dorm. But while they toil constantly to perform their role and prepare the hotel for guests none arrive. Instead they contort themselves daily to the expectations of their strict matronly bosses without clear purpose and in their spare moments escape to the herb garden confide in each other and quickly find solace together. Finally the hotel is filled with people for a wild and raucous party only for one of the women to disappear. What follows are deeper revelations about the myths we teach young women what we raise them to expect from the world and whether a gentler more beautiful life is possible.
language: English
title: Strega
publisher: Riverhead Books