The Motel of the Stars is a novel set in Kentucky and North Carolina
on the eve of the 1997 anniversary of the Harmonic Convergence, a
mystical alignment of planets and a portending of universal peace first
celebrated in 1987. Part satire of New Age philosophy and part
commentary on a modern, fear-based era, the novel is the story of Jason
Sanderson and Lory Llewellyn, who travel to the 1997 Anniversary
Gathering at the foot of Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. Both
characters have for ten years mourned the loss of Sam Sanderson, Jason's
son and Lory's lover, and both must emerge from grief into a new age of
possibility and hope.
Karen Salyer McElmurray is the author of Surrendered Child: A Birth
Mother's Journey, described by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as "a
moving meditation on loss and memory and the rendering of truth and
story." The book was the recipient of the 2003 AWP Award for Creative
Nonfiction and a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book. McElmurray's
debut novel, Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, was winner of the
2001 Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing. Her
work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the
Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the North Carolina Arts Council. She
lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she is an assistant professor in
creative writing at Georgia College and State University; she is also
the creative nonfiction editor for Arts and Letters.
