The Bluebird Vacancy

About this book

The Bluebird Motel has stood on Old Highway 9 outside Esperanza, New Mexico for seventy years, and for the last three of them Marisol Vega has been keeping it alive on stubbornness, duct tape, and her grandmother Rosa's recipe for cafe de olla. The interstate took the through traffic decades ago. The famous rooftop neon, a diving bluebird trailing stars, has been dark since a hailstorm, with the NO of NO VACANCY stuck permanently lit, which Marisol has come to regard as the sign editorialising. Into this checks Noah Calloway: unhurried, funny, vague about his work, paying cash, staying indefinitely in Room Nine. He fixes the ice machine without being asked. He learns everyone's coffee order. And he says nothing at all about the guide that could decide whether the Bluebird sees another season.