Linda B Morganstein

Kaplan's Oasis Hotel

Short Synopsis: Kaplan’s Hotel by Linda Morganstein

In the summer of 1972, SARA LEVY arrives at one of the largest resorts in the Catskills, the fictional Kaminsky’s Oasis Hotel. She’s the daughter of a madcap Catskills couple who were killed on their way to their big break on The Tonight Show when she’s nine years old. She’s sent to live in a sheltered suburb with her well-meaning, condescending aunt and uncle. She reluctantly agrees to go back to take a summer job at the Oasis at the behest of her best friend, Arlene Goodman, the child of Holocaust survivors. Sara is struggling with abandonment issues, suppressed talent, and her budding feelings for other women.
When Sara and Arlene arrive at the Oasis, they meet the young people who are working and playing hard for the summer. HARVEY FUNT is an obnoxious egotistical bully who introduces them to the gang. Most notable for Sara is LUCY PEREZ, a brilliant half Jewish, half Puerto Rican med student, whom Sara is immediately attracted to.
As Sara and Arlene learn the ropes, each confronts her own nightmares, culminating in Arlene getting fired for dropping hot borscht on a guest and fleeing back to the suburbs. Sara, after losing the one person she trusts, develops an unlikely friendship with Harvey, based on their longings to perform. Harvey is an accomplished ventriloquist, with a puppet named Willie, a Black grandfather figure. The Funt duo hatch a scheme to perform at a nearby bungalow colony.
Meanwhile, Sara and Lucy do a sensual dance, with Sara giving the frustrated Lucy mixed messages. Things come to a head when Sara and Lucy have furtive sex after the Funt duo bungalow colony performance. Freaked-out Sara pushes Lucy to the floor, then orders her out.
After seeing the performance, a Hollywood agent calls Sara and Harvey, offering them a pilot in Los Angeles, if they get married. They agree to a sham marriage.
The pilot is terrible, and the series is worse. The agent gets Sara a new pilot without Harvey, who goes back to ventriloquism in seedy clubs. Harvey meets a nice girl, a ventriloquist. He begs for a divorce, which Sara reluctantly agrees to, since Harvey has become a source of comfort and stability.
Lucy attends the wedding. She’s now a brilliant pediatric neurosurgeon at UCLA Medical Hospital, with an oncologist girlfriend. Lucy catches Sara off-guard by professing her love, still, for Sara. They start seeing each other “platonically,” until a young patient of Lucy’s dies. Lucy and Sara have comfort sex. Sara finally realizes the Lucy is her real love, no matter what the consequences.
A few years into the relationship, the gang reconverges in the Catskills to attend the funeral of Ruth Sanger’s chauffer, a man everyone loved. Once there, Sara acknowledges that she is an entertainer, devoted bringing comfort, humor, and joy to an audience, be it in person or on television.
In the end, she realizes, we are all crave unconditional love and connection, rooted in a connection with a Source that guides us, if we listen. She knows her mission.
The novel takes a bold approach, told from multiple points of view, across a time span of seventy years, slowly revealing secrets and hidden desires.