Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

 I cannot believe I have already reviewed this novel by Elise Friedland, Last Summer at the Golden Hotel.  

This novel a fun look back at the history of the Catskill Mountains, a piece of especially Jewish nostalgia. This novel can be read for the simple entertainment and/or for a deeper dive into the family dynamics and drama. 

The Golden Hotel has been a family run business for generations.  Two families have come together every summer to open the hotel to the guests who return on a regular basis expecting a certain standard of service that is renown in the Catskills.  This book is based on the historical hotels that attracted so many families who summered in the Catskills from New York City.  The families would drive up and mothers and children would stay while fathers would commute back and forth to the city between work and leisure.  

But times have changed and the hotels are not as popular as they once were. The clientele is not returning and those who are seeing the decline of the facilities. The owners cannot keep the hotel running.  There are of course also secrets that have been kept over the years and relationships are on edge.  it is time to sell and move on.  But not everyone is in agreement about how to move forward.

The issues of the generational divide and the hard decisions to live in the past or to embrace the future.  How to memorialize the past and not lose the memories of fun times had.  This plot also examines family secrets and how much you know about people even when you live with them.

I interviewed the author about this book and we had a wonderful exchange about her reasons for writing this book and how she met a member of the Grossinger family, from the Grossinger Hotel, one of the most famous of the Catskill establishments.