Motel Stories

The fictional Sunset Inn is a seedy motel with a storied past on a neglected block of Hollywood Boulevard. In twenty linked tales, Motel Stories takes an empathetic deep dive into the eccentricities and troubled lives of the diverse guests who check in to this refuge of last resort-for either pleasure or escape, and always an interrupted night's sleep.

Edward, the motel's cynical but occasionally accommodating manager, confronts a daily cast of ever-changing characters. A man who dances with dolls. Central American immigrants from civil war celebrating their honeymoon. The addict mother of a newborn infant facing a fateful reunion with her long-lost brother. A disgraced politician forced into hiding. A Vietnamese mama's boy waiting to meet his foreign bride. An elderly couple checking in to the same room where they first met sixty years earlier.

Four interrelated stories complete the collection. A Filipina internet bride struggles to maintain her autonomy in suburban America. A teenage boy flees his hometown to escape persecution. A female impersonator replaces her glamorous mentor on stage. A gay, middle-aged gallery owner confronts his own errant past when his troubled teenage nephew visits.

William Torphy portrays these characters with both empathy and wry humor, revealing their universal desire for love and connection, recognition and security. Sometimes raw, and often humorous, this timely debut collection pierces through both the loneliness and the humanity of distressed outliers temporarily set adrift by circumstance in the American underbelly.