Inn of a Thousand Days: A Memoir of a Country B&B

Broken bones. Quixotic chefs and Dickensian tenants who reside like ghosts in guest rooms laid waste by time and neglect. Agonies of body and soul... This memoir is Alan Tongret's off-beat and bittersweet tale of leaving a New York acting career to help his parents wrest a hulking hotel from the graveyard and transform it into the cozy Lamplighter Inn at the rough-hewn paradise of Augusta, Kentucky. Tongret jumped into the task with brio, thinking he'd have the inn open in ten months and would then luxruriate in the country lifestyle while sipping mint juleps in the lobby with his guests between writing plays and novels. But he and his parents were sucked into a four-year quagmire as they wrestled with endless seams of rotted wood, shifltless helpers and mushrooming debt, Alice-in-Wonderland building codes and marital stress. When they were about to sink below the horizon for good, Tongret risked the last of his family's resources to create a theatre piece that saved the hotel and what remained of their sanity. It's an altogether improbable yet totally true miracle of energy, vision, and iron-clad tenacity. The snugly placed, novelistic plot and poetic imagery form a cautionary tale of so many American towns that are embattled by decay and the Wal-Mart blitzkrieg.Tongret, Alan is the author of 'Inn of a Thousand Days: A Memoir of a Country B&B', published 2005 under ISBN 9780976571100 and ISBN 0976571102.